Re: Remote Access to WebOPAC

[Karen Perone <peroneka@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Milunovich, Kent wrote:
> For the last few months, some of our patrons have had problems accessing 
> our WebOPAC remotely.  They can access the WebOPAC home page, but when 
> they try to do a search in the catalog, they get a message "403 
> Forbidden."  ...

We experienced a similar situation recently which we were able to track 
down to being added to the BookWhere 2000 list of libraries. We were 
added in November 2002 (we didn't know that we were being added) and 
started having problems with our local patrons getting 403 messages 
around January.

I noticed a huge increase in the number of hits per month and that 95% 
were suddenly Z39 hits. We went from 2,300 hits in November 2002 to 
nearly 12,000 hits in January 2003. Logfiles were filling every 1-2 days.

Our solution was to turn off general Z39 access except for a few select 
sites that we know need to use it.

-- 
Karen Perone              peroneka@xxxxxxxxxx
Systems Coordinator
Rodman Public Library     voice: 330-821-2665
215 E. Broadway Street    fax: 330-821-5053
Alliance, OH 44601        http://www.rodman.lib.oh.us/