Hello all,

A few days ago I asked this incredibly helpful list if any of you have
had to change IP addresses for your e-journals and e-resources. I've
created a summary of the responses I received and listed them below.
Almost everyone who responded indicated that they created a spreadsheet
with the contact information for all of their vendors, and noted on the
sheet when the change had been made by that vendor.

Thank you so much to everyone who responded! The information I gathered
will be a tremendous help as we proceed to change our IP addresses.

Best regards,

Amanda

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1. We sent our site description to all publisher with whom we had
contracts and emphasized the change of IP address.  The site description
is posted at the end of this e-mail. An explanation of why you need to
make the change will help.  Publisher naturally question why the request
for change/addition of an IP address is being made. We also asked our
subscription agent to notify all publishers and to change the
information in their system for renewals and updates.  Having someone
check access to products as they are adding the IP address would be a
good idea because I am sure some will need to be handled by more than an
e-mail.

2. In the end I sent an e-mail to each vendor I could (but copied a
really generic message) with the old IP and the new IP ranges with a
VERY brief explanation of why we were changing and the effective dates.
Some checked for ownership of the IP and wanted to know if we were
exclusive users of the range. Some entered our new IP and left the old
one in place until it was replaced and asked me to contact them after
the date of the change. At least one required a call to a customer
service no. (CCH) I killed a few trees and kept paper copies of the
interchanges , and checked to see if I got questions or confirmations.
3. I recently had to do this--I tried to be efficient and send a single
email message to all my various tech support addresses with a "return
receipt requested".  Unfortunately, just because someone opened your
email doesn't mean anyone a)read it or b)acted on it.  I sent out my
message 3 months in advance of the IP change but I still had a fair
number of vendors that didn't implement the change.  If I had to do it
again, I would make myself a little spreadsheet with the tech support
contact info for each of my vendors to keep track of communications and
get a confirmation and a person's name for each.
4. I know of no alternative to logging into each applicable
administrative module and editing the ranges. It does ease the process a
bit if you work from a list of all the affected databases and serials
and the administrative logins (URL, customer ID, login name, password).
I created a list of my own, but I understand those ERM products (e.g.
from Serials Solutions) can help.
5. Unfortunately I've had to do this more often than I would have liked.
At least it hasn't occurred since I started registering individual
serial titles through EBSCO's enhanced EJS registration tracker.
Generally we had a hot cutover, so one day we were one set of IP numbers
and the next day the new ranges.   For all our databases, etc. it
required a two step process.  About a week or so before the cutover I
contacted all our providers and added the new ranges.  Some vendors
allow you to maintain your own IP ranges through their administrative
sites.  I did those first.  Then emailed the support/help contacts for
the others, requesting a confirmation that the numbers had been added.
I kept a list of all our vendors and recorded the contacts and
confirmations.  After the cutover, I went back and deleted the old IPs,
but I could do that at my leisure.  The godsend was keeping that list of
contacts, because I had to go through the process three years in a row.
EBSCO updated many of the online journals for us, but some publishers
won't allow a third party to handle such updating.  I live in fear of
hearing the news that we're changing ISPs again!
6. I had to do this recently. With Ebsco, I sent the new ranges to my
account representative. She handled all the online titles that we get
through them. Project Muse, Jstor. For the individual titles that we get
directly from the publishers, I contacted the publishers' customer
support and notified them individually. There were a few that I had to
get back to the customer support people because of some technical issue
on their end. We also use SFX, there were some issues on their end,
which also got fixed. On the whole it was not too big of an issue for
us.
7. I made a list of all the resources, and then went to websites and
found technical support email addresses and sent them emails. I asked
for a response. I just manually checked off the ones I had done and
gotten responses from. If you have an ERM, you can probably group them
by provider, and you also probably have the contact information stored.
Even so, I can't think of a way that this could be automated. Also,
there are always those providers that do not respond. Then of course,
there is the testing to make sure it worked. The major change I had to
make was our outbound proxy IP, and it was impossible to test because
all the computers I have access to are within our network.
8. Currently we do not have an ERM system and we do not have any single
database or spreadsheet that will keep track of all vendors. I have
created spreadsheet of all vendors/publishers and found e-mail for
Technical Support on the web site. Then I have e-mailed our IP change
request to those vendors. They usually respond. In some instances I can
change IP addresses through Admin module on the vendor's web site
(that's the easiest way). There were some difficult situations when the
vendor will say that I am not an Administrator for our site and they can
change IP only by the request of an Administrator. Usually they gave me
the name that they had in their client database. Fortunately this person
is still here, so I was able to ask her to send them an e-mail as well
as to request to add my name as an Administrator. I kept track on my
spreadsheet of the dates I have contacted the vendor and the outcome,
whether and when the IP has been changed. So that I know that I need to
follow up with some of them. Overall it was a very time-consuming
project. The good thing was that we needed to delete the IP that was no
longer used by [institution name deleted].

Amanda Z. Okandan
E-Resources Training and Outreach Librarian
Sandia National Laboratories
Technical Library
(505)284-0219 (p)
azeigle@sandia.gov
http://infoserve.sandia.gov