Library shelf - OpenAthens 101

OpenAthens 101: A guide for our librarians – Discovery hints

27 March 2019 • Andy Anderson, data analyst

This blog will cover how discovery hints help your users to easily login using their OpenAthens account.

As you know, there are times when your end-users won’t use your library portal for finding information. For example, they might find the thing they need via a search engine and need to sign in. This usually requires them to go through some form of organization discovery, often called a WAYF (literally Where Are You From).

Experience has shown that people don’t always know their home organization by the name it’s registered as in a federation. There are a couple of things you can do to make this easier for your end-users. Both solutions are available on the organization tab of your administrator account.

Discovery domain hints

This is where you enter any email domains that are unique to your organization so that people can find their home organization by entering their email address. E.g: hospital.nhs.uk, institution.ac.uk, company.com.

Geo location

This is where you enter the latitude and longitude of your organization (or organizations) so that users can be offered the ones they are nearest to. E.g. 51.449405, -2.588588

For details see: