The UCLA Library’s online subscriptions are all set up to provide automatic access to any computer or device with a UCLA IP address, the unique address associated with every computer on the internet. IP addresses are assigned automatically by your internet service provider when you connect to them.
Your computer can obtain a UCLA IP address in a few ways.
On-campus: Simply connecting your computer to a campus network (including wireless networks) gives it a UCLA IP address, since UCLA is the internet service provider.
Off-campus, Proxy: The proxy setting in your browser re-routes your web requests through a special UCLA server (which has a UCLA IP address), so the requests appear to be coming from UCLA.
- The proxy settings won’t “turn on” until you try to access a restricted site. At that point, you’ll be diverted to a UCLA logon page.
- One you’ve logged on to the proxy server, you’ll remain connected until you close your browser.
- Proxy setting are unique to each web browser, so if you use multiple browsers you need to set it up separately on each.
Off-campus, VPN: The VPN software assigns a “virtual” UCLA IP address to your computer, which is seen by other sites instead of the regular IP address assigned by your internet service provider.
Whichever method you use, you never need to log in to a journal site to gain access. You actually log in to a campus network, the proxy server, or the VPN client, and that causes the journal sites to recognize you as a UCLA user and provide the appropriate access. The “institutional login” links you see on many sites are for subscribers using alternate authentication methods. They don’t do anything for us.
In addition, some sites require unique subscriber IDs in the URL (web address) in order to access content, so be sure to always use links from UCLA Library pages (or UC-eLinks) to access content so you’ll have the UCLA-specific address.
