Help With O’Briens Forms
This request for help from Annette Demers, Reference Librarian at the Paul Martin Law Library, University of Windsor:
I just wanted to solicit assistance from the other blog readers out there. Has anyone successfully configured access to O’Briens Forms using EZ Proxy? Currently we are using this link to OBriens http://www.obriensforms.com/scripts/oblogin.pl but after the patron enters the OBriens website and agrees to the Terms and Conditions, we get a red “Invalid Access Method” message on the next screen that appears. What we think is happening is that ezproxy is absorbing the first cookie that gets set, so that the user must touch the site twice (hit the back button and click on the product again) for the cookie to set on their home computer in order for access to continue. I see that at least one other institution is having this problem – Capilano College in BC has included information about how to get around this problem right on their page linking to O’Briens.
When I contacted O’Brien’s tech support, the guy there just said “Your IT guy needs to figure it out.” Helpful indeed!
I was wondering if anyone else had come across this problem and sorted it out already. I don’t want to have to reinvent the wheel and would appreciate any help! The info for O’Briens that you’ve included in your ezproxy config file would be most useful!
Thanks, Annette
Does anyone else find it odd that we’ve posted compaints about this twice in a month – see http://www.slaw.ca/2006/07/20/canada-law-books-obriens-online/#comments – and no-one at CLB seems to care enough to even respond. Stuart Morrison? Are you there?
For Canadian law librarians, don’t forget you should contact your association vendor liaison committee if you are experiencing any difficulties you cannot resolve directly with the vendor. Both TALL and CALL have this type of committee. In this case possibly the vendor prefers to deal directly with those committees rather than responding to comments via the ‘Net.
Thanks for the comments all!
I found the email address for Wendy Moffat, Customer Service Manager for CLB, and sent her the following email:
w.moffatt@canadalawbook.ca
Hello Wendy
I found your contact information via the Canada Law Book website.
I thought that perhaps you might like to know that O’Briens online is frustrating a number of people in the law library world.
There are two blog entries on SLAW that you should be aware of.
http://www.slaw.ca/2006/07/20/canada-law-books-obriens-online/
http://www.slaw.ca/2006/08/25/help-with-obriens-forms/#comment-13030
I hope this will motivate CLB to make necessary changes and provide necessary assistance to users who are having issues with O’Briens.
Thank you
Annette Demers
Wendy Moffat has replied to me indicating that the matter has been called to the attention of our account Rep Patti Metcalfe and also to Travis Brown in our Tech Support Department. I’ll keep you posted!
Annette
Simon, of course I saw the note as did my colleagues at Canada Law Book. The issues raised are of real concern to us and so we had contacted the individuals directly. We are actively working with these customers to resolve the issues (as we blog).
Mea Culpa for inappropriate blogosphere protocol!
Just in case my response is viewed as tardy over the next few days I’m off to visit mummy in the U.K.but will return.
Just another update to let everyone know that I have received telephone calls from Patti Metcalfe and Janet Wright at Canada Law Book to inform me that they are working towards a resolution of the various customer complaints.
Thanks Stuart. Have a pint (or two) and enjoy yourself. Simon
Well for my part, O’Brien’s forms isn’t working well enough for me to proxy. My previous problems remain.
http://www.slaw.ca/2006/07/20/canada-law-books-obriens-online/#comments
When I did talk to the tech reps several weeks ago they merely affirmed that these problems exist and that they were working on them. I haven’t heard anything since.
I had a conference call with various people at Canada Law Book yesterday and I’m happy to report that they are moving O’Brien’s Online to a new platform later this fall which will allow them to fix many of the programming problems we’re experiencing.
They are going to call me when it’s ready for a test run. I’m crossing my fingers because I truly it easier to word search for forms than to use the index in most cases.
While I was at it, I also brought up with them some concerns about the way search results are ordered. I can’t make rhyme nor reason of it. They are aware that it currently less than ideal and will have more room to play with that aspect of the service when it is running on a new platform.
If you have any questions or concerns, let me know or contact Ruth Epstein, Vice President, Legal Publishing, Canada Law Book. She is leading a team of people at Canada Law Book who are taking an active interest in bringing O’Brien’s up to snuff.
I just wanted to touch base with everyone out there who had previous problems with OBrien’s, and in particular those who have figured out how to configure OBrien’s access via EZProxy. I have had no further follow ups after the initial flurry of concern from various CLB account reps mentioned in the thread above. (That was August 2006 btw.) Then I just had a call from a student yesterday to tell us that when she tried to access OBrien’s from our proxy server – she was getting “page not found”. I tried it from on campus and it worked fine, but went home, tried it and also got the “page not found” error.
I really don’t have the expertise to understand how this is technically possible (for a webpage to be found in one instance and not found in another) – so I wrote an email directly to the Tech Support guy who gave me the brush last time I had a problem. His reply was:
“Unfortunately CLB is only able to support the on-campus access. It sounds like you were able to properly access the website via an on-campus connection. Your own University’s IT department will need to look into and resolve that off-campus access issue.
Usually the “page not found” type of error indicates that there is a problem with a connection and that the user machine is not properly getting to the website. Have your IT department check and test all the EZproxy settings.”
All information that I pretty much already have, thanks! I have not replied to him yet but am really interested in pointing out that every other law subscription database comes through quite nicely on EZProxy and it is specifically OBrien’s that is causing a problem. All I would like is some help knowing what to include in the CONFIG file!
Too much to ask I guess.
Heather – did you ever hear anything else about the new platform?
I welcome any help anyone could give! Is anyone else having an O’Brien’s meltdown?
Thanks
Annette
Hi Annette,
I’m at home right now and don’t have my documentation with me, but I did a beta test in the fall (I believe) of a revamp of the O’Brien’s site. My report was that I still had various problems with the site. Since that time, some of our lawyers and I have had other problems accessing and using the site and I have reported those problems to the tech support people at Canada Law Book and have had not entirely satisfactory results. I’m sorry that won’t offer much as far as explanation for you, Annette, but it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who continues to have problems with O’Brien’s.
To be fair, though, I haven’t been on O’Brien’s for a month or so and I do believe the people at Canada Law Book have since instituted some further upgrades (apparently not enough upgrades, based on your experience). I’m curious to go on now and see how it goes for me. I’ll report back once I’ve taken a look.
One thing I know they told me they had changed as requested is that now, when you click on “sign off”, the system actually signs you off. Previously it wouldn’t actually recognize that you had signed off so you couldn’t sign on again, which you normally wouldn’t have to do but because of some the error messages we were getting, it was something we felt we needed to do from time to time. Initially I was told by tech support that I should just clear my cache to solve the problem but you and I both know the entire ramifications fo that. I haven’t checked to see if the new “sign off” feature works as promised but I’ll give it a test.