We have a few test accounts which bypass our single sign-on MFA so we can
share them between us, which would work well for your faculty librarian
applicants use case. I think the key to convincing IT that these are
acceptable is ensuring them that their privileges will be narrow; no email
inbox, no accounts in related systems, just e-resources access. It's been
valuable to us.
We also use email aliases that multiple parties have access to. A listserv
(Google Group) is another way of accomplishing this, too.
Best,
Eric
On Wed, Jul 22, 2026 at 7:56 AM Joe Hourclé <oneiros_at_annoying.org> wrote:
> > 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 - 11:43:17 EDT