Proxying helps library users access commercially licensed e-resources off-campus, whether at home, on the road, or even standing on-campus but using a cell phone via the phone’s data plan.

We began by proxying some vendor links, but wanted a solution that allows easy batch proxying of links while also letting library staff control individual links.

OLS’s answer to this challenge is adding a special subfield to all links that need proxying: $xproxy.
For example:
85640 $uhttp://www.llmcdigital.org/default.aspx?redir=90010
$xproxy
$zAccess for CUNY Law School users

This achieves both goals. The subfield is not being used by Aleph, but it is valid cataloging, and lets OneSearch create proxied links on the fly. At the same time, proxied links are made school-specific. In other words, proxied links only display in OneSearch for the school that OWNs the record.

To support this, OLS has globally updated more than 250,000 licensed links in Aleph and OneSearch. In addition, new batch loads from specified vendors now receive the new $xproxy subfield.

Moving forward, control of OneSearch proxying is in the hands of each library.

In the future, when you identify records that need to be proxied and are not,

• many records: please provide a record number list or other way to uniquely identify the group and open a work order asking OLS to batch update the records
• individual records: simply add the $xproxy subfield to relevant 856 fields and save

For records that are proxied and should not be, do the opposite (remove the subfield individually or ask OLS to remove them).

FYI: It usually takes about 12 hours for changes in Aleph to be reflected in OneSearch.

Example of a OneSearch record with proxying, as seen at 2 schools:

• Graduate Center OneSearch (full text link proxied on-the-fly by $xproxy)
• Baruch College OneSearch (no full text link, so nothing to proxy)

For metadata fans, here is a look behind the scenes:

• vendor URL with CUNY ezproxy:
  http://law.ezproxy.cuny.edu:2048/login?url=http://www.heinonline.org/HOL/Page?handle=hein.beal/bltp0001&id=1&size=2&collection=beal&index=alpha/B_beal#3
• MARC in Aleph (Graduate Center record).
• OneSearch’s XML version of the record (we call this Primo Normalized XML, aka PNX). Check out those linktorsrc fields in the links section!