Electronic Highways

Convenient Connectivity

Although current UB faculty, students and staff have Web access through UB computer accounts, many of you, for a variety of reasons, elect to use other Internet service providers (ISPs) such as America Online and Adelphia's Power Link. In the past, this has been problematic for those of you wishing to gain access to the many University Libraries BISON databases http://ublib.buffalo.edu/libraries/e-resources/ made available through the FirstSearch, INFOTRAC SearchBank and Ovid search vendors. Now UB community members with valid SUNYCards can connect to WorldCat (the world's largest bibliographic database), Books in Print, Expanded Academic Index (many full-text scholarly journal articles), Compendex, Current Contents , Medline and many, many more databases from "foreign" ISPs.

All you need to do is enter your barcode number from the lower left-hand corner of your SUNYCard that starts with 29072 when prompted for either a "username," "barcode," or "ID." (Type in the 14 digit number without spaces.) You are not required to enter a password-just connect and start searching!

Accessing your UB UNIX e-mail account while on the road outside local calling distance also has become more convenient with the Computing Center's Remote Access facility that automatically determines your remote (non-UB) Internet location. You can register your remote networked off-campus site by either telnetting to remote.buffalo.edu or going to the UBUNIX Remote Access website http://remote.buffalo.edu. These new interfaces are far more user-friendly than running the UNIX offsite program. The length of time for registering your remote site address is one week, but you can add additional time as needed.

For further assistance in using enhanced BISON database access contact libweb@acsu.buffalo.edu. Those interested in easier UB UNIX e-mail connectivity should e-mail consult@acsu.buffalo.edu for additional information.

-Gemma DeVinney and Don Hartman, University Libraries