August 26, 2003
David Kalins, The Library
The UC Berkeley Library purchases access to hundreds of electronic journals and databases to support the educational and research needs of the University community. By the terms of our licensing agreements, the vendors of such electronic resources as Proquest, Sciencedirect, and The Oxford English Dictionary serve their content freely to any computer on the UC Berkeley network. They deny access, however, to users who connect from commercial ISPs. So, when you're at home with your ISP connection, and it's midnight, and you have a report due early the next morning, and the information you need is locked away in ERIC or Ethnic News Watch, how can you get at that data? The answer is, through the Library's proxy service.
The proxy service lets your browser borrow, so to speak, a UC Berkeley IP address while it requests electronic resources licensed by the Library. Because it grants you a UC Berkeley connection, the proxy service requires you to identify yourself as a bona fide UC Berkeley student, faculty, or staff member before it allows access to any licensed resources. Currently, the Library's proxy service supports two forms of authentication:
Although they use different forms of authentication, both proxy servers provide access to the same range of electronic journals and databases.
The Library asks that users who wish to use the proxy service do so with a browser that supports a feature called Automatic Proxy Configuration. Many browsers do not support this feature, but the most common ones do. Mozilla, Netscape, and Microsoft Internet Explorer all support Automatic Proxy Configuration on Windows machines, whereas both Mozilla and Netscape (but not Microsoft Internet Explorer) support this feature on the Macintosh platforms. Automatic Proxy Configuration works this way: The browser is configured so that, when it starts up, it downloads an automatic proxy configuration script from the proxy server. This script is a JavaScript program which the browser runs whenever it requests a page. If the document being requested is one of the Library's licensed resources known to the script, the request is sent off to the proxy server which gets the document for you and forwards it to your browser; otherwise the request is sent directly over the Internet. In this way, the proxy server does not have to handle all your web surfing, just the documents which require you to have a UC Berkeley IP address.
Instructions for using the Library's proxy service and for configuring your browser to use either CalNet or SSN authentication can be found on the UC Berkeley Library Proxy Server Service home page (http://proxy.lib.berkeley.edu/).
In addition, you can obtain installer programs that can set up your browser to use the Library proxy service. You can download these from the WSS Software site (http://software.berkeley.edu/) or you can obtain them by purchasing the C@B CD, the campus's Internet setup kit (see Announcing the Connecting@Berkeley (C@B) 2004 CD in iNews). The Library proxy installer for Windows is designed to work on systems using versions of Internet Explorer or Netscape and connecting with broadband ISPs like Comcast, or on systems using versions of Netscape and connecting with a dialup ISP. (Internet Explorer with a dialup ISP still requires manual configuration.) The installer for Macintosh supports Netscape version 7.x browsers for Mac OS X and Mac OS 9. Feedback regarding these new utilities can be sent to the developers at Technical assistance regarding these programs can be found under the Connecting to the Internet section of the Connecting@Berkeley help page (http://wss.berkeley.edu/help.html#connecting).
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