MIDLINE

Submitted by Karen Hanus
Medical College of Wisconsin Libraries, Milwaukee WI

The Medical College of Wisconsin Libraries consists of three libraries. Todd Wehr Library is the main branch in the Medical College of Wisconsin, and there are hospital libraries in Froedtert Hospital and Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.

Hospital library users include physicians, residents, nurses and other administrative and clinical personnel. In early 2008, our libraries had access to more than 2,700 electronic journals, 800 electronic books and 70 databases. Access to most of our electronic resources on campus is controlled by Internet Protocol (IP) authentication. The library manages most of our e-journal subscriptions without the help of a subscription agent.

On February 5, 2008, MCW Libraries' Systems Department suddenly received numerous reports that our users in Children's Hospital were not able to access our electronic resources. Within hours we were able to confirm that the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin Information Services (IS) department had changed the IP ranges for the hospital. Although the hospital's IS department had been planning this change for several months, the library had not been notified.

The library then started on the project to restore access to our resources for Children's Hospital users. The library was able to restore access to 95 percent of resources within five weeks, and, for the most part, Children's Hospital users were able to return to normal use of library resources. In January 2009, we are still fixing some journals' IP ranges.

There were several pitfalls in the process to restore access:

• When we investigated and found out that the IP numbers had changed, we were given an IP range that was misinterpreted by library systems staff as one range (it was actually four). The library's serials staff had already begun changing IP numbers in some resources and had to contact some vendors in order to switch the IP numbers again.


• The hospital library's computers are on the MCW computer network, but many users in the hospital are on the Children's Hospital of Wisconsin (CHW) network. The IP change did not affect any computer on the MCW network but rather those on the CHW network. We needed to work with the hospital's IS department to get a computer on the hospital network installed in the library.


• When we were contacting vendors to get the IP numbers changed, we started with the most important resources. At one point, a database user wanted access to a particular resource which we had not yet reached. She contacted the hospital IS department. Neither she nor the IS department informed the library, and IS contacted the vendor instead. When the library reached this resource on the list, we were told that the IP numbers we were trying to register were already registered with a different institution (CHW) and that we could not register them. The vendor was unaware that the hospital was part of our library system and told us that we would have to get permission to put that institution back under our account. It took several days to get this straightened out.