Issues with EDS, Gale, and EZproxy

[Killebrew, Amy]

Hello-

I'm desperate for some help and so far I have received very little from EBSCO, Gale, or OCLC.

It began as an issue with off-campus users linking from EDS (EBSCO Discovery System) into Business Insights: Essentials (Gale). Initially, users who clicked on a Business Insights link were not being directed to our EZproxy login page, but instead were being asked to login via Gale's InfoTrac. I contacted EBSCO about this and they tweaked something in EDS, which didn't full resolve the issue (and we have not come any closer to a solution). Here is the problem that we have been having since then (over 3 weeks ago):

I am off campus and I do a search in EDS for "james foley" and I receive these results:

[cid:***@01CFE23E.47EC4530]

When I click on the "view record in Business Insights: Essentials" link, I am taken to our EZproxy login page. However, after logging in I am not directed to the article in Business Insights. Instead I am getting this page in Business Insights:

[cid:***@01CFDD8F.AD45D350]

What's really strange is that if I go back to the EDS results page and try the link again, then it works taking me straight to the article.

In addition to reaching out to EBSCO (they suggested some changes to the stanzas in our config file, but none have worked), I also reached out to OCLC support, received a response asking for more information, provided what was requested, and have never heard back.

Has anyone ever dealt with an issue like this? I'd really appreciate any help that you could provide.

Thanks!

Amy Killebrew
User Experience and Emerging Technologies Librarian
Columbia College Chicago Library
624 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60605
312-369-7379
***@colum.edu


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[Andrew Anderson]

Watch HTML fragment handling. I know from past experience that Business Insights makes heavy use of “#xyz” style fragments, and it’s possible that one path is dropping the URL fragment while the other path is preserving it. Your best bet to catch this is Firebug with the “Persist” option enabled in the network pane, and watching each requested URL as it bounces around. Depending on how your EZproxy authenticates, this may be why the logged in case works — the handoff between the proxy and your authentication system may not be preserving the fragment properly.
--
Andrew Anderson, Director of Development, Library and Information Resources Network, Inc.
http://www.lirn.net/ | http://www.twitter.com/LIRNnotes | http://www.facebook.com/LIRNnotes

Post by Killebrew, Amy
Hello-
I’m desperate for some help and so far I have received very little from EBSCO, Gale, or OCLC.
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What’s really strange is that if I go back to the EDS results page and try the link again, then it works taking me straight to the article.
In addition to reaching out to EBSCO (they suggested some changes to the stanzas in our config file, but none have worked), I also reached out to OCLC support, received a response asking for more information, provided what was requested, and have never heard back.
Has anyone ever dealt with an issue like this? I’d really appreciate any help that you could provide.
Thanks!
Amy Killebrew
User Experience and Emerging Technologies Librarian
Columbia College Chicago Library
624 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60605
312-369-7379

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To unsubscribe, send request to ***@itec.suny.edu

[Michael J. Paulmeno]

We one had a redirect error caused by a corrupted config file. Basically patrons would log in as usual from off-campus through EZProxy and then get an error message which would clear if they opened that database in a new tab. Your problem sounds somewhat similar to ours. My eventual solution was to copy the config file from an older version.

Cheers,
Mike


Michael Paulmeno
Electronic Services Librarian
Systems Department
Roberts-LaForge Library
Delta State University
(Parcels to) 1417 Maple St
Cleveland, MS 38733
Phone: [phone]
Fax: [phone]
***@deltastate.edu



From: Killebrew, Amy [mailto:***@colum.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2014 9:53 AM
To: EZProxy discussion list
Subject: [ezproxy] Issues with EDS, Gale, and EZproxy

Hello-

I'm desperate for some help and so far I have received very little from EBSCO, Gale, or OCLC.

It began as an issue with off-campus users linking from EDS (EBSCO Discovery System) into Business Insights: Essentials (Gale). Initially, users who clicked on a Business Insights link were not being directed to our EZproxy login page, but instead were being asked to login via Gale's InfoTrac. I contacted EBSCO about this and they tweaked something in EDS, which didn't full resolve the issue (and we have not come any closer to a solution). Here is the problem that we have been having since then (over 3 weeks ago):

I am off campus and I do a search in EDS for "james foley" and I receive these results:

[cid:***@01CFE23E.47EC4530]

When I click on the "view record in Business Insights: Essentials" link, I am taken to our EZproxy login page. However, after logging in I am not directed to the article in Business Insights. Instead I am getting this page in Business Insights:

[cid:***@01CFDD8F.AD45D350]

What's really strange is that if I go back to the EDS results page and try the link again, then it works taking me straight to the article.

In addition to reaching out to EBSCO (they suggested some changes to the stanzas in our config file, but none have worked), I also reached out to OCLC support, received a response asking for more information, provided what was requested, and have never heard back.

Has anyone ever dealt with an issue like this? I'd really appreciate any help that you could provide.

Thanks!

Amy Killebrew
User Experience and Emerging Technologies Librarian
Columbia College Chicago Library
624 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60605
312-369-7379
***@colum.edu<mailto:***@colum.edu>


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[Amy Killebrew]

Hi Andrew -

What you describe sounds like what might be happening. I enabled the persist option in the network pane on Firebug, but unfortunately this is all pretty new to me and I'm not sure what I should be looking for.

If I can confirm that we are dropping a url fragment, what would I do to correct that?

Sorry if my questions are pretty basic. I've fallen into the role of EZproxy point person at my institution and this is all really new to me.

I really appreciate all the help I can get.

Thanks!

Amy
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[Andrew Anderson]

Sure, let me walk you through what I think is happening here. First let’s do a basic search on Business Insights, and see what the URL looks like normally:

http://bi.galegroup.com/global/search#q=oclc&displayGroup=company|Y

Notice that unlike “normal” search URLs, instead of a query argument of “q=oclc”, here Gale has decided to use a URL fragment instead.

For this URL to make it unscathed thorough the proxy server, it needs to be URL encoded:

http://bi.galegroup.com/global/search%23q=oclc&displayGroup=company%7CY

Here I replaced “#” with %23, and “|” with %7C. I’m not 100% certain that “|” absolutely needs to be encoded, but it won’t hurt anything to do so.

So, what you will be looking for are URLs in the network panel in firebug that reference bi.galegoup.com, either directly, via the proxy, or most importantly as arguments to your proxy login script:

http://emils.lib.colum.edu/login?qurl=http://bi.galegroup.com/global/search%23q=oclc&displayGroup=company%7CY

Test that URL first, both logged in and not logged into the proxy. If they both work, then you can be reasonably sure that your proxy authentication is not consuming the URL fragment improperly. If it only works when you are logged in, then take a closer look at whatever you tie into for authentication.

If that URL works for both the logged in and logged out case, then I would take a closer look at what EBSCO was sending to see if it is properly encoded. If it is not, then that’s something to take up with EBSCO.
--
Andrew Anderson, Director of Development, Library and Information Resources Network, Inc.
http://www.lirn.net/ | http://www.twitter.com/LIRNnotes | http://www.facebook.com/LIRNnotes

Post by Amy Killebrew
Hi Andrew -
What you describe sounds like what might be happening. I enabled the persist option in the network pane on Firebug, but unfortunately this is all pretty new to me and I'm not sure what I should be looking for.
If I can confirm that we are dropping a url fragment, what would I do to correct that?
Sorry if my questions are pretty basic. I've fallen into the role of EZproxy point person at my institution and this is all really new to me.
I really appreciate all the help I can get.
Thanks!
Amy
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