An interesting call about Proxy links involving government agencies

[Jill Ellern <ellern@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I just got an interesting call from a Maureen Moore from the FDA
researching proxied links on library system web pages.   She says that
many government offices (FDA, EPA, and several others) are quite
concerned that ezproxy links seem to "blend" a government agency
databases with other agencies and libraries.  They are concerned with
this because they are seeing it as an endorsement or something of
incorrect combining of resources between the libraries and these
government agencies. (It seems that when you mouse over the ezproxy
link, when it says 0-www.fda.gov.www.library.edu - this is being
misinterpreted by the several government agencies as a combined database
of the fda and that library.)  She was looking into the reason why
libraries were making such proxy links to government sites. I spent some
time informing her of the reason why we might want to do it, why we
might not want to make a proxy link, and how it might be done by
accident or to limit use.  I also let her know that I didn't think there
was anything these government agencies could do to prevent the
appearance of this "blending" and that these links were a great thing
for library access.  She is continuing to research this topic for these
government agencies.

I'm not sure what will be the outcome of this research that she's doing,
but just wanted you all to know (and might want to think about changing
unnecessary links)  I was also thinking you might have some additional
information I would forward on to her....gde