Complete the steps described below to gather the information needed to set up IP address recognition.
If you have questions about gathering the information, contact your OCLC regional service provider or OCLC Support.
Ask your system administrator if your firewall or proxy server will cache documents requested from FirstSearch because caching of interactive pages may cause problems. Every FirstSearch screen sent to a user contains information identifying the specific FirstSearch session. If a firewall or proxy server supplies a FirstSearch screen cached from an earlier session, the user could click a link on that screen sending information from an obsolete session to FirstSearch. This would cause FirstSearch to end the user's current session. To solve this problem, the system administrator might configure the firewall or proxy server not to cache pages from an oclc.org address.
Work with your system administrator to identify all the IP addresses shown on HTTP connections from your network that should have access to your FirstSearch account or accounts. An IP address (for example, 132.174.95.5) identifies a computer or other machine on the Internet.
If your institution has a proxy server, it may translate IP addresses used only within your institution's network into addresses used on the Internet. You must list only addresses used on the Internet when you set up IP address recognition. If you include addresses used only within your network, IP address recognition access will not work correctly.
The following addresses are never used on the Internet and should not be included in your list of IP addresses for IP address recognition:
Use the following formatting rules for IP addresses when you set up IP address recognition.
The following examples show how IP addresses may be listed:
Be sure that you have the authorization number for each FirstSearch account that you want your users to access through IP address recognition. You receive the 9-digit FirstSearch authorization number for an account when the account begins. If you need assistance, contact the FirstSearch administrator at your library or your OCLC regional service provider.
You must choose the authorization to use as your default authorization for IP address recognition. It is the authorization that FirstSearch uses when no authorization is included in the IP address recognition URL in a link on your library's web pages.
If you have one FirstSearch account, its authorization is your default authorization.
If you have two or more FirstSearch accounts, you must choose one of their authorizations as your default authorization.
The other authorizations will be additional authorizations for IP address recognition. To use an additional authorization, you must include it in the IP address recognition URL in a link on your library's web pages.
The following guidelines help you choose your default authorization:
The following examples illustrate choosing a default authorization:
Library A has two FirstSearch authorizations.
Because both authorizations belong to the same institution, Library A may choose either as the default. It chooses the first because it will have the most IP address recognition links.
Library B has three FirstSearch authorizations.
Library B must choose the first authorization, which belongs to the same institution as the second authorization and the same consortium as the third.
Library B may not choose the second or third authorization because they do not belong to the same institution or consortium.