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Making the Switch: Moving from deployed to hosted EZproxy
- 1. Making the Switch Moving from Deployed to Hosted EZproxy Grace O’Brien and Marie G. Cullen Ollscoil Mhá Nuad Maynooth University An Leabharlann The Library CONUL Conference 2023 May 24 - May 25 Sense and Sustainability: Environmental, Economic and Social Sustainability in Libraries
- 2. Title to go here • Bullet point 1 • Bullet point 2 • Bullet point 3 • Bullet point 4 • Bullet point 5 Ollscoil Mhá Nuad Maynooth University An Leabharlann The Library Background • Deployed (Locally hosted) EZproxy - Service provided by OCLC • Annual subscription • Authentication method • Hosted and managed locally • HEAnet Audit report • EZproxy hosted A fully managed and hosted e-resource access and authentication solution that connects users to e-resources with their existing single sign-on credentials
- 3. Timeline October 2020 Report to Library Management November/December 2021 Plymouth/UCC January/February 2022 Questionnaire & Config file February 2022 Library and IT project team March 2nd 2022 OCLC Kick Off meeting March to June 2022 LSP config, eResource Testing May 5th 2022 Live EZproxy Server June 7th 2022 Switch to Hosted EZproxy/SSO June 2022 onwards Outstanding issues - visitor access, vendors Ollscoil Mhá Nuad Maynooth University An Leabharlann The Library
- 4. Title to go here • Bullet point 1 • Bullet point 2 • Bullet point 3 • Bullet point 4 • Bullet point 5 Ollscoil Mhá Nuad Maynooth University An Leabharlann The Library Technical Aspects • Domain name change https://login.jproxy.nuim.ie/login? url=https://link.gale.com/apps/GBI B?u=nuim https://login.may.idm.oclc.org/log in?url=https://link.gale.com/apps/ GBIB?u=nuim • Security rules • Enforced authentication • Config file Title Optica Publishing Group URL https://opg.optica.org/default.cfm HJ http://opg.optica.org HJ ao.osa.org HJ col.osa.org HJ https://www.osa.org HJ imagebank.osa.org HJ josaa.osa.org HJ josab.osa.org HJ jot.osa.org HJ ol.osa.org HJ osa.org HJ vjbo.osa.org HJ www.opticsinfobase.org HJ www.osa.org HJ www.osapublishing.org
- 5. Title to go here • Bullet point 1 • Bullet point 2 • Bullet point 3 • Bullet point 4 • Bullet point 5 Ollscoil Mhá Nuad Maynooth University An Leabharlann The Library Contacting EResource Vendors
- 6. Title to go here • Bullet point 1 • Bullet point 2 • Bullet point 3 • Bullet point 4 • Bullet point 5 Ollscoil Mhá Nuad Maynooth University An Leabharlann The Library Testing Process • Software Updates • Testing • Email domains @mu.ie @mu.ie (affiliate) @mumail.ie @spcm.ie @spcmail.ie
- 7. Title to go here • Bullet point 1 • Bullet point 2 • Bullet point 3 • Bullet point 4 • Bullet point 5 Ollscoil Mhá Nuad Maynooth University An Leabharlann The Library Benefits • Economic sustainability • Greater security • Cleaner user experience
- 8. Title to go here • Bullet point 1 • Bullet point 2 • Bullet point 3 • Bullet point 4 • Bullet point 5 Ollscoil Mhá Nuad Maynooth University An Leabharlann The Library Decrease in Access Issues
- 9. Title to go here • Bullet point 1 • Bullet point 2 • Bullet point 3 • Bullet point 4 • Bullet point 5 Ollscoil Mhá Nuad Maynooth University An Leabharlann The Library Unforeseen Issues • Variation among vendors • Testing identified other issues • Communication • Off-campus access changes
- 10. Title to go here • Bullet point 1 • Bullet point 2 • Bullet point 3 • Bullet point 4 • Bullet point 5 Ollscoil Mhá Nuad Maynooth University An Leabharlann The Library EZproxy Analytics
- 11. Thank You Grace O'Brien Electronic Resources Librarian grace.obrien@mu.ie Marie G. Cullen Systems Librarian marie.g.cullen@mu.ie Ollscoil Mhá Nuad Maynooth University An Leabharlann The Library
- 12. Useful links About EZproxy - Diagram Slide 2 https://help.oclc.org/Library_Management/EZproxy/Get_started/About EZproxy EZproxy https://www.oclc.org/en/ezproxy/hosting-options.html Case Studies https://www.oclc.org/en/member-stories.ezproxy.html EZproxy Analytics https://www.oclc.org/en/ezproxy/ezproxy-analytics.html Electronic Collections Maynooth https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/library/collections/electronic Ollscoil Mhá Nuad Maynooth University An Leabharlann The Library
Editor's Notes
- Introductory Remarks My name is Marie Cullen, and I am the Systems Librarian, at Maynooth University Library, and this is my colleague Grace O’Brien who is the Electronic Resources Librarian The Library provides a service to the students and staff of Maynooth University (MU) and St. Patrick's Pontifical University (SPPU) who share a campus. The hosted EZproxy project relates to the conference theme of economic sustainability. It also aligns to the MU Library Strategic Plan (2020-2023) goal to “harness digital capacity and innovation to create efficiencies…”. The pandemic highlighted the importance of cybersecurity and access to electronic resources.
- Marie Deployed (locally hosted) EZproxy is a service provided by OCLC. It facilitates easy access to e-resources from any location and at any time. An annual subscription is required. It is a method for authenticating/identifying valid MU and SPPU staff, students, visitors or affiliate users The Server was in located in MU IT Services and required local management by MU IT Services and the Library. This included updates to local the configuration file when details of eResources changed. It should be noted that sometimes we would only realise there was a problem when reported by a user. Following on from a HEAnet Audit report MU IT informed the Library that the EZproxy local server was at the end of life. It required upgrades to the Operating System and the license was expiring. Required a solution that was hosted. As an OCLC customer we looked at hosted EZproxy. What is hosted EZproxy? A fully managed and hosted e-resource access and authentication solution that connects users to e-resources with their existing single sign-on credentials.
- Marie Report to Library Management During lockdown, a combination of issues with Stanzas in our OCLC configuration file and the recommendation in the HEAnet Audit from MU IT Services that the EZproxy Server should be decommissioned prompted the Systems Librarian to compile a report recommending a move to Hosted EZProxy. Based on the report Library management agreed to a move to hosted EZproxy. Plymouth/UCC As part of our research OCLC put us in touch with two libraries who had implemented hosted EZProxy. University of Plymouth who had EZproxy for several years and University College Cork who had moved to it more recently. This was a worthwhile exercise. Questionnaires & Config file OCLC supplied us with preparatory documentation including a questionnaire requiring details of contact names, current EZproxy setup, IP ranges, an institution domain name and authentication preferences. I mentioned Single Sign On in the previous slide. MU’s Authentication type is SAML authentication to MS Azure. Staff and Students were already using Single Sign On to access Moodle and Email. The advice from MU was to move to SSO for accessing eResources. We downloaded our existing Configuration file from our local server and submitted to OCLC. This enabled them to begin configuring our server. It should be noted we had to revisit the questionnaire a few times. Library and IT project team A Cross Library MU IT Project Team was established. The team included staff representing most areas of the Library - Systems, Collections including electronic, teaching librarians and information desk staff. In addition, MU IT Services happily nominated a member of their team to join the project. Important to consider who should be involved in the project. E.G. IT expertise was essential. As mentioned previously often problems are first reported at the Library Desk. Very important to have them involved in the project. OCLC Kick Off meeting We had a kickoff meeting with OCLC in March 2022. Our questionnaire was discussed, the details and timeline of the project. E.G., when we would get our server. We chose June 7th as our go live date as exams would be finished and we would have a few weeks to resolve any teething problems before the repeats in August. The hope was for minimal disruption. LSP config, eResource Testing After the kick-off meeting we started preparing for implementation. We configured an integration profile in our Library Services Platform, Alma started testing resources. Grace will talk further about what was involved in testing resources. Live EZproxy Server May 2022 Switch over to Hosted EZproxy/SSO June 2022 Outstanding issues - visitor access, vendors will be discussed further by Grace
- Grace: Domain Name Change I am going to dive into some of the technical aspects of the project. Our proxy appears in the url when we access eresources. We had to choose a new domain name that would appear. Previously we used jproxy.nuim.ie. You can see an example of a proxied url here. In 2014 we rebranded to become Maynooth University and the new domain name May.idm.oclc.org reflects this Security Rules We had to make several decisions around cybersecurity. We spent time deliberating around security rules, such as the number of downloads allowed per hour and the number of country switches via VPN in a day. We also discussed whether the user would be blocked or merely flagged if these limits were breached for each. Enforced Authentication Our previous authentication involved IP address on campus and deployed EZproxy off-campus. We decided to implement Enforced Authentication, which means that users would authenticate via hosted EZproxy whether on or off-campus This choice had knock on effects as you will see later. Config File & Stanzas We provided OCLC with our config file which is a large text file, that includes configurations of all our databases These configurations are known as stanzas. You can see an example of a stanza here. After a user authenticates, EZproxy searches the config file to determine if the resource the user is trying to access is available, and if it is will allow access. If the stanza is missing, the user will not be able to access this resource. Previously the Systems staff made changes to the config file, but moving to hosted EZproxy meant that OCLC would manage this from now on.
- Grace: Contacting Vendors The most time-consuming part of the project was contacting all our EResource vendors. I would recommend creating a spreadsheet that will allow you to keep track of this. We needed to ask all our vendors to add the new IP address of the hosted EZProxy, while ensuring that they kept our old IP address to ensure access over changeover period. I contacted our vendors systematically starting with our largest resources first, to ensure that these were successfully working with the new EZproxy. The number of vendors to be contacted and how long this will take depends on your institution. I would strongly recommend devising an email template that you can share with all your vendors. Here you can see the template that I used. When you have gathered all your vendor contact details, you can begin sending these emails out in bulk. I decided to send these one by one, so that I could keep track of each query individually. I know most of our vendor contacts on a first name basis, so sent each one a separate email. It looks more personal and I think this helped to action the request more quickly in many instances.
- Grace: Software Updates We made some local changes in Alma, our library services platform, and our A-Z of Databases List. In ALMA we created a new proxy integration profile for the hosted proxy, you can see and example of this on the screen here. We also had to update the IP registry and ensure all our IReL resources were updated. In many cases we added the IP ourselves on vendor websites as our vendors did not provide this service. Testing Once these changes had been made we then had to test different types of resources such as ebooks and ejournals. We had to test both out of Alma and by using a proxied url, which I showed you an example of previously. We also tested in different browsers as some browsers displayed errors whereas others did not. In the event where we had both IReL & Maynooth subscriptions from a vendor we tested resources from both accounts. Email Domains Not only did we have to test resources for each vendor, we also had to ensure that different types of users were able to access our EResources with the new proxy. We have five different email domains and you can see these here, these represent staff and students in both Maynooth & St Patrick's. Testing was very time consuming and required a lot of concentration. We had to switch between two integration profiles in ALMA, one for the deployed EZproxy and one for the hosted. If we forgot to switch back to the current deployed proxy after testing we risked locking out our users. I chose to do this work in the afternoon and blocked out my calendar.
- Grace: Benefits Since migrating we have experienced many benefits. The config file is managed by OCLC and we no longer have to take action when there are stanza updates. It also means that we do not have to worry about missing proxy updates from vendors. The only action we need to take is when we have a new resource to add. We simply put a ticket into OCLC who get usually get back to us within 24 hours. This has saved a lot of staff time and is much more sustainable for us economically. We also have greater security and any breaches will be blocked by OCLC. We can then view the security dashboard, verify that the users are affiliated with us and unblock them We now have single sign on for EResources and here you can see our WAYF where are you from screen that users are presented with, when they try to access our EResources. The university branding is familiar to our users, who were already authenticating via office 365 to access both Outlook Mail & Moodle. Overall it is a much cleaner experience for the user.
- Grace: User Queries Another benefit I would like to highlight is the impact on our user queries We keep track of the number of access queries from users. This graph shows a comparison between the number of queries we receive over the course of a year. In blue and yellow you can see the number of queries we received in the two years before the hosted EZproxy implementation Down here at the bottom in navy you can see the number of queries in the year following implementation. As you can see the trend stays the same (September/October are always busy) but the actual number of queries has decreased. You will also see a sharp decrease in April/May last year in yellow just before the go live date I think this was due to us resolving and pre-empting a lot of problems that came up when testing. Enforced authentication (authenticating via EZproxy on and off campus) helps with our queries as we no longer need to ask users if they are on or off-campus. We can replicate these access issues ourselves wherever we are. Previously I had to ask a colleague who was WFH to replicate the issue if I was onsite and the user was off-campus.
- Grace: Unforeseen Issues As with any project there are always unforeseen issues. Some of our vendors supported EZproxy but not EZproxy hosted, which meant that we had to switch their resources to Shibboleth All the testing allowed us to identify other issues and outdated links. While this helped us to clean up the catalogue, it also added to our workload as we had to pause testing to resolve access issues Overall, the transition went very smoothly When we were finished testing, we communicated how the new proxy would look to our users. We had users querying where the off-campus login page had gone Our users had to get used to the idea of not needing to log in off-campus via the old channels. We prepared an answer for the front desk staff to share when they received queries on this.
- Grace: EZproxy Analytics We also took out a subscription to EZproxy Analytics, an analytics tool that is only available with hosted EZproxy. We had seen examples of several university libraries that were able to use Analytics to distinguish between university departments when examining usage. Unfortunately, due to our authentication configuration this is not possible. We decided to go ahead and take out a subscription as it has many other benefits. Staff & Students For example, we can distinguish usage between staff and students. I recently had a query from a professor as to whether a resource was being used by staff or students and this is the type of query that we can now answer with Analytics We can deep dive into usage on a trial or a new resource and the data is available the next day. It is a useful addition to COUNTER usage statistics. Visitor Access Enforced authentication on-campus has meant that we can track usage both on and off campus, but has created a problem for visitor access. We still need to find a satisfactory solution to providing visitor access to EResources as the solutions being offered by OCLC would move us away from Single Sign On which we are not inclined to do. The next step of our hosted EZproxy journey will involve utilising EZproxy Analytics to its full potential.