Library subscription database proxy errors

  • dstillman
    edited February 27, 2020
    Unlike Zotero, ZoteroBib is a website, and while data is stored locally in the browser by default, the actual site translation can only happen on Zotero servers. ZoteroBib has no way of using gated resources that can only be accessed via a proxy server, since it has no access to the proxy server. If this ever worked with gated resources for you (which I would be somewhat surprised by), it would only have been if the copied URLs happened to include all session state and weren't further restricted by IP address or cookie, which would be fairly unusual and certainly not something to expect or rely on.

    Ideally, you would teach the students to try to recognize gated vs. ungated (roughly, temporary vs. permanent) URLs — it's a skill that will serve them well in life — and only use ungated URLs with ZoteroBib, and then for gated resources paste identifiers such as DOIs and ISBNs into ZoteroBib instead.

    The alternative, of course, would be to instead use Zotero with the Zotero Connector, which runs locally and can access whatever you're looking at in your browser.
Sign In or Register to comment.