Distance Education

Like all academic libraries, the University of Iowa Libraries buys access to online journals, research databases and other collections of online articles (and other content). Often, the subscriptions we pay are based on the number of students who will have access and we need to ensure that only our students/staff/faculty have access to the articles. The providers of online articles know that any computer coming from our range of internet (IP) addresses is on the UIowa campus and should have access. Off-campus, though, isn’t so easy.

All our links to something we pay for go through a proxy server – sort of a gate-keeper that asks your HawkID and password and then lets anyone who should have access through to the resource. That only works if you start somewhere on the University of Iowa Libraries websites (http://www.lib.uiowa.edu) though. If you google the journal article and find it on a publisher website, for example, or follow a link to an article from someone else’s website, no one will know you’re part of the UIowa and they’ll probably want some money up front.

Here are some strategies to help.

• Start your research at the library – http://www.lib.uiowa.edu.
• Configure Google Scholar’s Library Links to use the University of Iowa – http://scholar.google.com/scholar_preferences or just log into Google Scholar through us. 
• Use the Article Locator to find out if we have articles someone else is linking to.

Share your secrets for getting library materials in the comments.

Dan the Librarian

This is one of the more common problems that off-campus students encounter and, unfortunately, there are several possible explanations and solutions and often the best strategy is to contact the librarian for troubleshooting help.

Dan the Librarian (for students in Distance Education programs)
lib-disted@uiowa.edu or 877-807-9587

Main Library Information Desk
319-335-5299 or http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/contact/ask

Here are some troubleshooting ideas that might also help.

Links to online articles and books need to have a section in their web address or URL that triggers the library’s proxy server, which asks for your HawkID and password and makes the target database think you are on campus.

• Check to see if the link starts with http://proxy.lib.uiowa.edu… or http://purl… The rest of the web address can be quite long and varied. If the web address does not start one of those ways, try adding “http://proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/login?url=” before the rest of the web address so that it looks like http://proxy.lib.uiowa.edu/login?url=http://www.your.web.address.edu/yadda/yadda.
• If that does not work, try looking up the electronic book in the library’s InfoHawk Catalog or try looking for online journal articles in our Article Locator.

You can always call us for help, too.

Have any of you had problems with access to databases or found good ways to overcome problems accessing library resources? Tell us about it in a comment.

Dan the Librarian