About Athens Authentication

For many years, Athens has been UK HE's Identity Management service, run by Eduserv and funded by JISC. JISC will stop funding Athens on 31st July 2008 and will replace it as the national access management service by a new service called the UK Federation, based on the Shibboleth technology.

How does this affect you?

If you are used to logging in to Athens to access e-resources then you will need to get used to new access routes.

Links to most e-resources from the Library web pages and catalogue are already authenticated by IP address and routed via EZproxy (though they may be accessible via Athens too at present).

On-campus, you have seamless access to these resources; off-campus you will be prompted to login to EZproxy with your Managed Windows Service username and password.

British Standards Online, JustCite and LexisNexis Butterworths have been converted to IP/EZproxy access recently. ESDU, Info4Education (i.e. Construction Information Service et al) and Westlaw will follow shortly.

A few resources, including:

BUFVC resources (inc TRILT and the TVTimes Project 1955-1985)
Census resources
Digimap
Economic and Data Service (ESDS)
MIMAS landmap
Planex
Zetoc alerts

cannot or will not allow access by IP/EZproxy. CSD and the Library are actively working with JISC and the vendors concerned to ensure that Shibboleth or some other authentication method is available by Aug 1st 2008. CSD are developing a new UK Federation login page, and direct login links to these resources.

Personal settings tied to your Athens account, for example in RefWorks and Zetoc alerts, will need particular attention.

The Library's RefWorks page has been updated to explain how to convert your Athens-based RefWorks account into one that is no longer tied to your Athens account. An announcement will follow about how to convert Athens-based Zetoc alert accounts.

For other resources where you may have chosen to set personal preferences (e.g. ScienceDirect), try logging into your account via Athens as normal, and then edit your profile to choose a new username and password. Failing that, note your personal settings, access the resource via EZproxy instead of Athens and create a new personal account, then change its settings to match your previous personal account that was tied to your Athens account.