After the end of term on the 14 December 2020, we will be migrating our OpenAthens authentication for e-resources access from our locally hosted version (a server on campus) to a server hosted by OpenAthens themselves. We will remain members of the UK Federation so you will still look for “Institutional Login” style links for login on the resources. We are migrating now as OpenAthens no longer provide support for locally hosted versions of this system and the local hardware has reached end of life status. Some additional positives are that we can stop having different access routes for on/off campus access and you will be able to use your full IT Account credentials (full email address and password) as you already do to access many University of Reading systems.
You should not notice a break in access to resources or a change to your experience of them but we wanted to inform you of the migration in case you wish to back up any personalisations you may have made on individual platforms. These features may include the ability to save highlighted phrases or quotes, add notes, save annotated images, create alerts, save searches or simply bookmark a certain chapter.
With the help of your Academic Liaison Librarians we have identified key platforms that we know use such features and contacted the relevant suppliers to ensure a smooth transition with no loss of your data, wherever possible. Our investigations lead us to be reasonably confident that the migration will not affect any personalisation you may have set-up on most supplier platforms. However, we would strongly recommend downloading or making a note of any saved searches, alerts and notes, etc before the migration date 14 December 2020, so that in the unlikely event the changes we make do affect personalisation, your research will be unaffected.
We are aware that user accounts on the Ebook Central platform will have to be moved over to the new authentication system manually after the migration has occurred. If you notice that your annotations or bookshelf are missing after the migration, please contact us at eresourceshelp@reading.ac.uk and we will work with Ebook Central to restore these.
As always, if you are having any issues accessing e-resources, you can contact us via eresourceshelp@reading.ac.uk or by submitting an e-resources problem report form. We are always happy to help.
Sophie Dorman, E-resources Team