The University of Edinburgh

Gain support in providing secure access to digital resources through hosted EZproxy

photo: University of Edinburgh library interior — University of Edinburgh library interior.

"EZproxy transformed the way our university community accessed digital resources when we implemented it over a decade ago. We’ve now migrated to the hosted solution of EZproxy which has greatly simplified the maintenance and configuration. The migration was seamless, we were very impressed with the OCLC Support team, and the service reliability ensuring uninterrupted access to our licensed resourced.”

Ianthe Sutherland
Library Development & Systems Manager, The University of Edinburgh

11 April 2025

The University of Edinburgh is well known for its academic excellence and comprehensive library holdings, with over 3.8 million digital and physical items and 200,000 special collection items. The division serves around 40,000 students and 5,000 academic staff from 167 countries, providing crucial resources for research and learning.

To address the challenges they faced in managing secure access to digital resources, the library staff selected EZproxy as a solution over a decade ago. Although EZproxy was delivering a straightforward way to authenticate users to access licensed resources, it was challenging to maintain the on-premises setup. The infrastructure management was complicated with the team struggling with keeping the underlying servers and authentication protocols up to date, maintaining secure access. Additionally, the lack of multi-factor authentication led to increased security concerns and unauthorized access attempts.

"The hosted version of EZproxy has been a game changer for us. It provides a streamlined, user-friendly experience while maintaining the high security standards we require with the support in place from OCLC when we need it.”

Integrate smoothly without compromising security

By moving over to the EZproxy hosted solution, the responsibility of maintaining and configuring the underlying infrastructure was passed over to OCLC. The integration of EZproxy with the publishers was already in place, with the list of stanzas and blocks now being managed by OCLC instead. The university recently moved its EZproxy authentication over to Microsoft Entra ID to enable multi-factor authentication. The support provided by OCLC through Zendesk was excellent and the implementation seamless, simplifying the process for the University of Edinburgh greatly.

“The technical support team has been brilliant, if there were any problems the support team dealt with it straight away. When the University was undergoing a major transformation of our systems, it was a big challenge, but they managed to solve it all for us” Ianthe said.

With the migration over to the hosted version of EZproxy, the university has greatly simplified the management of their licensed e-resource access solution. The smooth transition, thanks to support provided by OCLC, has improved access and operational efficiency, furthering the library’s mission to support the university and the wider public. This improvement has had a positive impact on the Digital Library with support from OCLC in place. EZproxy ensures that students and staff can access the university’s digital resources anytime, anywhere, without compromising security and the hosted version ensures the software remains up to date and secure with support from OCLC should the university need it.