Updates on electronic resources from the library of Nottingham Trent University
The temporary access arrangements for Westlaw have been withdrawn in Library OneSearch, following the conclusion of the ‘essential maintenance’ works on 28 August.
Access to Westlaw is once again by university username and password from on-campus and off-campus.
At short notice, Westlaw is carrying out ‘essential maintenance’ on its Shibboleth service: which means it will not be possible to sign-in to Westlaw using a university username and password between 22-28 August.
Temporary access arrangements have been agreed with Westlaw, and links in Library OneSearch have been updated accordingly.
Between 22-28 August, on-campus access to Westlaw will be direct (using IP authentication). Off-campus access will not be available. On-campus access will only be possible using the links in the Find Databases service of Library OneSearch.
A further update will follow once Westlaw’s normal sign-in services have been restored.
Technical problems which were resulting in errors when trying to access some ejournal titles on the Westlaw platform through SFX have now been resolved.
As part of the fix now deployed, SFX is able to provide (through the login process) title-level linking for all Westlaw titles in the SFX Knowledge Base. Previously, SFX was only able to provide platform-level linking for Westlaw titles.
The Westlaw off-campus access problems reported on Friday were resolved shortly afterwards and access to the service from off-campus (using a university username and password) is now working normally once again
Off-campus access to Westlaw (using a university username and password) is currently unavailable. Westlaw is experiencing technical problems which are affecting both Shibboleth and Athens based authentication for all UK academic sites. Their technicians are aware of the issue and working on a resolution. A further update will be provided once access has been restored.
A configuration problem, which was preventing off-campus Shibboleth based access to the Chitty component of the Westlaw service, has now been resolved. Off-campus customers of Westlaw now have access to LLR’s complete subscription collection using Shibboleth.
Following an intensive period of configuration work, Shibboleth authentication has been enabled for a large number of additional resources. Links and prompts in eSearch and SFX have been updated accordingly. A detailed guide to using Shibboleth on each of the affected resources has been added to the eServices support wiki.
The resources now requiring a university username and password (Shibboleth) for off-campus access are as follows:
For all of these resources, Athens authenticated access will continue to be available for the time being, in parallel with Shibboleth-based authentication – although LLR will be promoting Shibboleth access (“Using your university username and password”) in preference to Athens.
Shortly after the last eServices update, all links in SFX for UK legal journals in the Westlaw database were updated to direct customers to the new Westlaw platform. Rather than resolving to the individual title level, these links direct customers to the homepage of the Westlaw interface. It is hoped to be able to reinstate title level access once Westlaw confirm the details of the persistent linking syntax required by SFX.
SFX links to UK Legal Journals provided through Westlaw have not yet been migrated to the new Westlaw platform but currently continue to point at the previous online version of the resource. Westlaw have yet to release the new deep-linking syntax required to support journal level linking on the new platform but have indicated that this should be available in the next few weeks. As soon as this linking syntax is available, the connections will be updated. (SFX integration with Westlaw is the product of work by the customer community in the UK rather than directly by Ex Libris so there is more scripting and configuration work required of each local site).
The following prompt has been added to the information screen in eSearch for the Westlaw service, drawing customers’ attention to a scheduled downtime period:
Due to a systems upgrade, the Westlaw service will now be unavailable between 6pm Saturday 10 November and 6am Monday 12 November 2007.
Access to the new Westlaw interface has been established in eSearch. Authentication remains direct on-campus with an Athens username and password required for off-campus access.
After 30 minutes of inactivity, Westlaw terminates an active session and displays a ‘timed-out’ message. To start a new session, simply refresh the page (and re-enter your Athens credentials, if accessing from off-campus). eServices have approached Westlaw to ask them to add a prompt to this effect to the timeout page.
Westlaw reported just before 6pm yesterday that off-campus Athens authentication to Westlaw was working normally again (it did appear to have been working fine for several hours before the official confirmation).
eResource updates 
You must be logged in to post a comment.