Mitigating Madness: How We Authenticate And Authorize Users To Deliver Databases In A Contractually Complicated Context

During the 2011 overhaul of the Mercer University Libraries website we developed an authentication system to interface with EZProxy and our campus Active Directory system that provides convenient management and delivery of our A-Z database listing. With multiple campuses and seven e-resource privilege groups, we were able to provide persistent URLs for databases to subject librarians, dynamic database lists based upon users' access privileges, convenient integration with our content management system, and a simple backend management interface requiring little expertise to use. We then sought to improve the situation by organizational and license simplification before our 2014 website overhaul: We hired a dedicated licensed content librarian, and systems and technical services personnel worked tirelessly to streamline our seven privilege groups into two by negotiation and policy changes. We then modified our workflows to encourage this simplicity. This paper describes how technical services and systems can design and create an in-house application to ease the dynamic delivery of database information, authentication, and access. Then it describes subsequent improvements upon that system with organizational changes and better business practices.