This is a non-working facsimile of the login page that patrons use for accessing databases from off-campus!

Security Settings

One area where problems can occur is in the security settings on your home computer. The security settings can be set in a manner that prevents the database vendor from "trusting" the home computer enough to allow access to their database. Also, your settings may block the ability for the database website to save cookies on your computer, or to install software that is needed in order for the database to work properly.

Here is a list of some of the places that home computer security settings are made:

  • Personal Firewall software (like Norton Personal Firewall)
  • Window XP, Service Pack 2 (it is set to block Referring URLs by default)
  • Browser security settings (Internet Explorer, Netscape, Firefox, Safari, etc.)
The basic gist of what we need to do to make this work is to set up your computer to “trust” the database vendor website. Once your computer trusts the vendor, the vendor will trust your computer and then you will be able to get into their databases.