PassKey for easy access off campus to licensed e-resources

The library has a new way for you to connect to licensed electronic resources when you are off campus.  It’s called CUL PassKey, and here’s how it works –          

You’re working at home and come across a link to a recent article in, for example, the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies.  You could open the library catalog, search for Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, and then follow the link to the journal.  But there is a simpler way:  the CUL PassKey bookmarklet.  With PassKey installed on the bookmarks toolbar in your browser, all you have to do when looking at a licensed resource from off campus is click on the PassKey icon on your bookmark.  You will be prompted for your netid and password, and then will be reconnected to the full text of the desired content.

You will find PassKey and instructions for installing and using it here.  Hat tip to Peter Hirtle at CUL for this info.

 

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

pgc1@cornell.edu

 

 

FDsys, the new federal digital system

U.S. Code, Federal Register, Congressional hearings, House and Senate committee reports – the federal government is improving electronic access to these and many other materials.  The new system is FDsys, which provides much easier searching than the first generation of GPOAccess.   This news from the Government Printing Office:

“The sunset of GPO Access is planned for the end of 2010. At this time, FDsys will assume the role as GPO's electronic system of record. Migration of all content from GPO Access to FDsys will be complete by October 2010, and the two systems will run in parallel through the end of the year.

 

“FDsys is a system that allows Federal content creators to easily create and submit content that can be preserved, authenticated, managed, and delivered upon request. As opposed to just being a content repository, it is a system that will continually be updated with new Federal content collections, and these collections will need to be refreshed and migrated over time.”

 

You will notice that many of the documents have a blue banner at the top, showing that the document is official.  Try the “Advanced Search” link from the middle of the FDsys homepage for the most specific searching.  If you had bookmarked GPOAccess, it’s time now to revise that and link to FDsys.  Please contact me or your librarian liaison if you’d like to learn more about FDsys.

Pat Court

Associate Law Librarian

pgc1@cornell.edu