> On Jul 22, 2026, at 10:30 AM, Sonnenschein, Nathan <000002b474595115-dmarc-request_at_lists.clir.org> wrote:
...
> Community users: We have 3 dedicated computer stations for these users. It doesn't require a login; our IT somehow created a passwordless account exclusively for use on these stations. This means that users effectively share an account, so we have multiple signs posted about logging out of websites. The computers delete files and reset every night. One limitation is that these users can't have their own printing accounts, but that's turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
>
> *
> These computers are the only way for community users to access our eresources, since we're on EZProxy and the computers are on the campus IP range. (There's no way for them to access the few databases that require individual accounts, like the NYT.)
>
>
> *
> We previously used Pharos for community user accounts, but quite frankly, it was a pain. At most, we have a few community users a day, so our current setup feels much better scaled to our needs.
Decades ago, I was at a university that had a similar system where they took a snapshot of a user account and then whenever someone logged into the machine, it was refreshed back to the snapshot.
This would reset cookies back to a "clean" state, remove files that had been downloaded or saved, etc.
... unfortunately, we had a day when a technician decided to log into the university's new portal system (which I had helped build) just before taking the snapshot ... so I got to spend a day or two trying to figure out why people were getting logged into someone else's accounts. (because the authentication cookie was now on every computer in the computer labs)
-Joe
Received on Wed Jul 22 2026 - 10:55:40 EDT