Library Administration: Systems

Blount Library licenses three interdependent systems for access to its services and print/digital resources:

OCLC WorldShare Management Systems and WorldCat Discovery for acquisitions, metadata, discovery and circulation of print and digital sources. OCLC offers extensive online training at no additional cost through its Community Center. 

OCLC - hosted Ezproxy for authentication of remote users. By arrangement with Averett's IT Department, Ezproxy authenticates users against the university's LDAP server, providing access to licensed resources for students, faculty, and staff. Averett has offered some form of remote authentication since the 1990's. Ezproxy has been the mainstream solution for nearly two decades, however Open Athens seems to be gaining traction. Hosted Ezproxy requires little or no training, however training is available to subscribers in the OCLC Community Center, including use statistics and remote view of Averett's server configuration and status. OCLC maintains the server configuration and database stanzas for hosted clients. To add new vendor domains for authentication, email support@oclc.org.

SpringShare LibApps (LibGuides CMS) is the HTML authoring system from which students link to databases, WorldCat, library instruction, library hours, etc. The CMS contract includes custom JS/CSS and unlimited templates, enabling a full featured, database-driven web site. Averett librarians develop all content on an easy to use platform. Access to source code is available, though rarely needed. Springshare offers extensive online training at no additional cost through its Community Center. 

Links for systems configuration are available to librarians and staff from https://averett.libguides.com/wms.

In addition to these public facing systems, the library has a new (2018) contract with Prenax, Inc. for licensing print and digital journals. When licensing e-journals directly, be sure to identify a URL for access and report new domains/services to OCLC for Ezproxy configuration. Also, select the e-journal title or collection in WMS/Metadata/Collections. Please see Dr. Wasley or Deborah Touchstone for more information on Prenax.