Inside the Walled Garden

As a new librarian who has grown up accustomed to browsing open content on the web, one thing that irritates me is the authentication process for licensed resources. I recognize, of course, that authentication is a good thing, necessary for upholding vendor licenses and protecting publisher content. I also want to ensure that vendors and publishers receive payment for the top-notch information resources they maintain.

What actually irritates me is that most authentication systems don’t really play nicely with the rest of the Web. This problem has become especially evident with all the nifty Web 2.0 tools that have come up in the last few years. Licensed resources have turned into a walled garden of awesome stuff that no one uses because it’s too much trouble to scale the wall. As a result, many of our users make do with sub-par information and avoid using the resources on which we spend thousands of dollars. Not really a new problem, but one that has maybe been exacerbated by Web 2.0.

A few examples:

• I’m at home, browsing Facebook (or Twitter, take your pick), and I see an interesting link that my colleague has posted. I click on it, only to find that it requires authentication. In most cases, my interest wilts instantly and I proceed to the next link, a Youtube video of a dog on a skateboard (more entertaining perhaps, but much less enlightening). Maybe I make a mental note to check the first link later, but more likely I forget to go back unless it was really interesting.
  
  
• An off-campus family medicine resident is looking up background information on community-acquired pneumonia. Rather than going through the university library proxy server log-in and accessing some awesome point-of-care tools, the resident just googles it and finds the Wikipedia article. So much easier! (The quality is debatable, of course, but that’s a question for another day.)
  
  
• You want to set up RSS feeds from several authenticated resources. Good luck with that! You’ve chosen to embark on a road of unending frustration. (This article presents a nice way to make RSS accessible for users.)
  

I realize I’m being a little harsh. In fairness, I do appreciate how much progress has been made since the early days of proxy authentication in libraries. I've personally found things like the LibX toolbar and OpenURL plugin to be simply fantastic for dealing with authentication issues (for tech junkies, anyways). And I’m sure authentication will become even smoother in the future. But, for the time being, our walled garden just can’t compare to the convenience and usability of the open web, especially in the age of Twitter.

I try to promote our licensed resources as much as possible. But as a new librarian, former student, and somewhat of a “power user” when it comes to computing, I sympathize with other users who feel that these resources are often too hard to access. When following a Web link is a multi-step procedure and creating an RSS feed is a harrowing experience, who can argue with them? I think about these problems every time I go to Wikipedia rather than the library website.

I'm always curious about what other librarians think about this issue, so feel free to discuss in the comments.