Athens login no longer needed.

This has been the case for some time now, but with placement students returning the question is still arising.

Athens is an access management system used for authenticating and accessing web-based resources like Web of Science or online journals (mostly this is for off-campus access).

Before, students and staff used to enter an Athens username and password for access. Now we've moved to a slightly different method called Athens Devolved Authentication (AthensDA). AthensDA goes on behind the scenes and the only user credentials you now need are your BUCS username and password. There's no need for an separate Athens username and password!

To confuse things, some online journals include an Athens login option on their webpages. This doesn't necessarily mean we subscribe to it, the journal publisher just builds that into their site. The most important thing is that you've connected to the journal via the library website (which asks you to authenticate with your BUCS login). If you are unsuccessfully trying to access a journal article, it might be that the library doesn't have access to that particular volume/date. Lots of people think it's their Athens username and password not working when actually it's just they want an article from 1997 and our subscription started from 1999, for example. You can check the date in the A-Z list of Electronic journals to confirm.

If you do need a copy of an article and it's not available online, you can either check the library catalogue for a print version, or request the article via InterLibrary Loan (see http://www.bath.ac.uk/library/ill/ for details).

Please contact me if you've got any queries.