Follow up: Clinician Access to library resources while “off campus”
In the previous post on this topic, I mentioned that all clinicians at our hospital can access all of our library’s digital resources from any internet-connected computer with IE6 or better.
This is because our CIO and VP of I.S. wanted our EMR’s “fat” client to be available from any location. To accomplish this, our I.S. department set up access to the EMR using Microsoft Terminal Services. All I had to do was build the Medical Library’s portal and demonstrate its usefulness to the CIO, and he added it as a tool launchable from inside our EMR. The clinicians can log into the portal with just their active directory user ID and password (which they use every day on-site).
Chris B. asked to hear more about how our I.S. department accomplished this- so I asked our CIO, Mitch Rozonkiewiecz for some details. Mitch said it was fairly straightforward and a fairly inexpensive solution to making the EMR more accessible (that happened to benefit our library, too).
Chris, Mitch said that if your library is interested in doing something similar to allow greater access to your library’s digital resources and your I.S. department isn’t sure where to start looking at this as a solution, he would be willing to discuss it with your I.S. department and share the benefit of his experience.
If that’s something you (or anyone else) would like, please email me at david [dot] rothman [at] gmail [dot] com, and I’ll put your I.S. folks in touch with our I.S. folks.
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September 26th, 2006 at 6:41 pm
This quasi-VPN access with a browser is a really great thing. I just got demonstrated the possiblities of this kind of access to the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf by my father – it seems like medical libraries are always a little ahead (?). It works like a charm with most resources – only Web of Science doesn’t really work this way.
Anyway this would be of great value to many users. At my university of applied sciences we have a “conventional” VPN access to the library resources. Even since the client is straightforward to install, the usage is hampered by possible requirements to adjust router and firewall settings – a task that many fellow students are not really up to. Apart from this the possiblity itself is not well promoted anyway.
By the way the keyword for this browser solution is “SSL VPN” and it seems there are also open source solutions like this: http://3sp.com/showSslExplorerCommunity.do (just a quick & dirty hit)
However I think it is a very promising technology that could “enhance” patron’s life a lot
September 27th, 2006 at 10:33 am
Thanks David. I am going to talk with my VP and CIO and see where the intial conversation leads. I will then gladly draw Mitch into the conversation if need be! Thanks again!