EZproxy is a web

proxy server In computer networking, a proxy server is a server application that acts as an intermediary between a client requesting a resource and the server providing that resource. Instead of connecting directly to a server that can fulfill a requ ...

used by

libraries A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

to give access from outside the library's

computer network A computer network is a set of computers sharing resources located on or provided by network nodes. The computers use common communication protocols over digital interconnections to communicate with each other. These interconnections ar ...

to restricted-access

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wikip ...

s that authenticate users by

IP address An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication.. Updated by . An IP address serves two main functions: network interface ident ...

. This allows library patrons at home or elsewhere to log in through their library's EZproxy server and gain access to resources to which their library subscribes, such as

bibliographic database A bibliographic database is a database of bibliographic records, an organized digital collection of references to published literature, including journal and newspaper articles, conference proceedings, reports, government and legal publications ...

s. The software was originally written by Chris Zagar in 1999 who founded Useful Utilities LLC to support it.

OCLC OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It wa ...

announced in January 2008 that it had acquired the product and was hiring Zagar as a full-time consultant for a year. Zagar is a librarian who serves as a systems librarian at the Estrella Mountain Community College, a part of the

Maricopa Community Colleges The Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD), also known as Maricopa Community Colleges, is a community college district in Arizona with its headquarters in Tempe. It is one of the largest, serving more than 220,000 students each yea ...

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southwestern United States. It is the list of U.S. states and territories by area, 6th largest and the list of U.S. states and territories by population, 14 ...

. He won the 2006 LITA/Brett Butler Entrepreneurship Award for his work with EZproxy.
EZproxy is a URL rewriting program, which works by dynamically altering the URLs within the web pages provided by the database vendor. The server names within the URLs of these web pages are changed to reflect the EZproxy server instead, causing users to return to the EZproxy server as they access links on these web pages." Previous proxy solutions were complex and difficult to maintain, and when EZproxy was created, authentication systems like

Shibboleth A shibboleth (; hbo, , šībbōleṯ) is any custom or tradition, usually a choice of phrasing or even a single word, that distinguishes one group of people from another. Shibboleths have been used throughout history in many societies as passw ...

were still far in the future. The software is sometimes confused with generic proxy server software designed to control web access. It is sometimes referred to as a "proxy referral" server to distinguish it. The software has been purchased by more than thousands of institutions in over 100 countries.

References

External links

EZproxy authentication and access software
official webpages at OCLC {{Use dmy dates, date=June 2020 Federated identity Internet access Library 2.0 OCLC