Print

Print


On 10/24/2012 2:52 PM, Joe Hourcle wrote:
> Do they even get a message that they've been restricted?
>
> I would think that having a message such as :
>
> 	74 records not shown because you weren't authenticated

As far as I know, none of the products have the ability to tell them 
_how many_ records in the total result set have been suppressed.

All of them have the capability, of course, to just tell users "Some 
records may have been suppressed, try logging in." I was trying to get a 
sense of how many implementations use such a message, and if anyone 
knows if it results in logins.

But I think my conclusion is that few implementers have thought about 
this, and most off-campus users probably don't get restricted content. 
:) Which may be just fine -- the amount of restricted content in a given 
product is also unclear (hard to compare between products, hard to even 
know for a single product if there's importnat 'restricted content' 
that's being missed).

EDS is unique in having a weird way of suppressing content. If user is 
not authenticated, you get 'holes' in your result set. If you asked for 
a page of 10 results, you might only get 5 results, with 5 blank spots. 
On the one hand, this is a weird UI, on the other at least it makes it 
obvious you're missing content, and how many records from the _current 
page_ (if not the entire result set) have been suppressed.  EDS does 
seem to have a fairly significant amount of restricted content, it's 
unclear if the other tools have around the same amount or less, like I 
said very hard to evaluate.

>
> would be enough to spur most folks to log in.
>
> What I hate is when you do a search for something that you *know* should be there, and it's not ... then you find out that they're using IP range or DNS matching, and not telling the user that they've intentionally hid stuff.  I think I've gotten most of the stuff straightened out with our local library, but I have no way of knowing for sure.
>
> (my desktop machine's doesn't resolve in the 'gsfc.nasa.gov' domain, and not on the most common network here ... so most systems' test for 'is this a local person' fail, and I get treated as an outsider ... I actually get better service using my personal laptop on the wireless network for visitors)
>
> -Joe
>
>