Distance Access
Accessing Resources away from the University Campus
This section will look at how to access subscription based resources such as electronic journals and books off the University Campus using either Athens DA or the Web Proxy. It is good practice to set both so that you can use all our resources.
Off campus access – Athens DA
Most of our Education related electronic resources (journals, databases etc.) do not need a username and password if you are using them on campus. However off campus you may need to use Athens Devolved Authentication (Athens DA). For this to be successful your PC must be set up to accept cookies and you must set a safe Athens cookie on your PC. More details about cookies are available at: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/athens/cookies.shtml
To set the safe Athens cookie:
2. Click on ‘Proceed to Athens Resource Gateway’ – this should download the cookie but in some cases it doesn’t and to be safe you should follow step 3.
3. On the left hand side of the screen click on the ‘to MyAthens’ link, and log in using your computer username and password. (At this point the first time you log into the Athens DA Gateway you will be faced with a ‘terms and conditions page’ – just tick ‘I accept’ and click continue.)
4. YOU SHOULD THEN IGNORE this page!! You will see a list of resources that use Athens as authentication but as it is not up to date please do not use it! We have no control over this external page and thus cannot update it. Details of our electronic resources are explained later in this handout.
5. The safe Athens cookie should now be on your PC so close this window down and open a new one.
6. You can now navigate from here to whichever resource you wish to use. Type in the web address of whichever resource you wish to use.
The cookie normally only needs to be set once on a PC on campus and should be the same for you off campus. However, if you try to use resources and cannot get access please repeat the above steps to set the cookie again.
Off campus access - The Web Proxy
As an alternative to Athens DA described above some databases use the IP address of your PC to decide whether or not you are a subscriber, and are allowed access, to a particular database. This works seamlessly for on-campus users as they are accessing resources from PCs with University IP addresses.
You can mimic the University IP addresses off-campus by using a web proxy. There are instructions for those using Internet Explorer, Opera, and Firefox and for those using Broadband or dial-up. Full details are at: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/diss/proxy/
When you set the proxy you will have to input your University computer UID when you log on to the Internet using your own Internet Service Provider. Please note, once the proxy is set, only you, as a student of the University of Aberdeen can access the Internet on your home PC as it will ask for your Computer UID – you may wish to disable your proxy after each Internet session.
