Sonny Software

Hello Jon and forum members,

my university has changed its VPN system. Before, from anywhere, I could access the internet, including journal websites for pdf download, with a University IP address, using the Cisco VPN client. Any program accessing the internet from my computer was therefore considered to belong to the University Network.

Recently, the VPN access of my University has been changed to a web-based system. One needs to log in on an internet page
http://vpn.gw.ulg.ac.be/
From within the browser, URLs can be accessed in two ways : either by bookmarks that one can create on the "home" page, or by typing / pasting the URL into a text field and hitting the browse button.
The "native" URL is transformed:

"http://google.com/" becomes:
"https://vpn.gw.ulg.ac.be/,DanaInfo=www.google.com+"
or:
"https://vpn.gw.ulg.ac.be/dana/home/laun ... gle.com%2F"
(I have not yet understood why and when the first or the second URL transformation is used...)

PubMed:
"https://vpn.gw.ulg.ac.be/PubMed/,DanaIn ... .gov,SSO=U+"
or:
"https://vpn.gw.ulg.ac.be/dana/home/laun ... FPubMed%2F"

etc...
After the login on the VPN webpage, one has to stay within the same program (Safari OR Bookends OR ...).

... I contacted Jon with this, because the retrieval of pdf files and their import into bookends has become a bit more of a hassle when working from outside of the University network.

He suggested I post this to get responses from other users - is this web-based VPN access common / becoming more common?

Thanks for your comments.

Felix

I don't know how common it is, but my university, the University of Oslo uses something like this for off-site access.
The details: there's a special website, https://vpn2.uio.no/ , where you log in, and then you can access e-journals etc. by pasting the URL of the journal into the webpage, just as described in the previous email.

I think my previous university UCL has a very similar system for off-site access.

I've been playing with this a bit. The web-based VPN my university provides works in the Bookends browser in the sense that I can navigate to an online pdf in a journal. But then what? I can't work out any way to get the pdf downloaded and attached to a reference. Am I missing something?

My present workaround is the following:
(1) In the Online Search window, search Pubmed (or whatever one uses) and mark the reference in the list.
(2) Toggle Text/Web View Button.
(3) When taken to the journal's website, copy the URL that appears in the address bar.
(4) Within the bookends browser, click on a bookmark for the VPN access page.
(4bis) Enter user name and password (only necessary once during one session).
(5) Within the VPN environment that appears, paste the link obtained in step 3 into the "browse" text field (see image above here).
(6) Access the pdf.
(7) Import it into my database using the "Import" button.
A bit laborious, but works reasonably.

nicka wrote:I've been playing with this a bit. The web-based VPN my university provides works in the Bookends browser in the sense that I can navigate to an online pdf in a journal. But then what? I can't work out any way to get the pdf downloaded and attached to a reference. Am I missing something?

Sorry, I missed this when it was first posted. You can download the pdf by dragging and dropping the pdf proxy icon (the dotted rectangle) onto your database window, or right-clicking on it. It will be attached to the selected reference if you drag and drop, if you right-click you have a few options.

Jon
Sonny Software