Hi Docs,
As a medical librarian part of my job is trying to get mobile sites and ebooks available to my docs. Our library has subscriptions to lots of online databases, resources and ebooks (MDConsult, FirstConsult, AccessMedicine, Web of Science, Scopus, Cochrane, etc.). Many of these sites are available to my insitutional users. Pre iPad and smartphone days, people accessed these resources from home on laptops or desktops using our proxy server. They only had to remember user their login for the library and everything was available to them.
Now that we have smartphones more and more of these companies like MDConsult and McGraw Hill (AccessMedicine and other Access databases) do not allow the mobile site to work with our proxy server. These companies require you to create your own personal username and password to access their material on the mobile site. I guess if we only subscribed to one resource this would not be a big deal to remember one extra login, but as I mentioned our library has a lot of resources so if more and more companies go this way doctors would have to memorize mutiple logins for each library resource.
My question for you all is how much of a problem is this or is it?
Is it a problem if you want to get into AccessMedicine on your smartphone that you have to login, then if you want to use FirstConsult you have to login again? Or does it not bother you?
Would you like proxy access to work with mobile sites? The reason I ask is that I have been talking with these companies and they don't seem to think requiring a personal login for their mobile site is that big of a deal for you all. They say that you prefer it.
Would you rather have a personal login for each mobile resource or one login that the library uses for proxy access.
Just wondering.
