Improving Access to and Delivery of Academic Content from Libraries

While academic libraries have traditionally focused on discovery, helping users to seamlessly access resources available behind a paywall is becoming equally important. The emergence of Sci-Hub into the public eye has led not only to more academic piracy but also to the discovery that academic users were using Sci-Hub for the sheer convenience of not needing to authenticate. This and other reasons have led to the suspicion that there is a need to improve and streamline the processes for users to authenticate and access resources available behind paywalls. While the traditional solutions are IP authentication and federated access, we now have a slew of possible alternatives or improvements. These include initiatives like SeamlessAccess and GetFTR as well as the emergence of new third-party tools known as access broker browser extensions, such as Lean Library and LibKey Nomad. Google has also been working toward a solution dubbed Campus Activated Subscriber Access (CASA), while the rise of content syndication partnerships between publishers like Springer Nature and ResearchGate gives the possibility of authentication using researcher profiles. This issue of Library Technology Reports will walk the interested nontechnical librarian through understanding the fundamentals needed to plan for these new developments.