Control user and administrative access to FirstSearch for your consortium, subgroup or institution, including your:

• Passwords and session timeouts for searches, full-text display and admin access
• Recognized IP addresses
• NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP) access to your local circulation system
• Additional authorizations

Choose whether your FirstSearch users have access to individual databases, full text from individual databases, or the information needed to create direct article access links. You also control:

• Delivery methods for full text, including viewing, printing and e-mailing
• Use of passwords for access to full text
• Creation and display of database topic areas to supplement or replace FirstSearch topics

If you provide access to the full text of journals in OCLC's Electronic Collections Online on a subscription basis, you can control this access and your costs through FirstSearch:

• For individual journals, turn access on or off

Set your preferences for:

• Interface color scheme (four presets, or create a custom scheme)
• Search type (basic, advanced or expert) that FirstSearch displays when a user begins a new search
• Maximum number of databases your users can search
• Availability of saved searches, letting your patrons with registered user accounts store results for future reference
• Availability of the Find Related feature, which locates additional records that match the current search
• E-mail notification when the number of remaining searches (for any database purchased on a per-search basis) reaches a specified threshold
• Within search results, limiting to items in your library, or highlighting of items in a specified library group
• Display of ownership information from other libraries
• Display of Union List data
• Availability of shelf status information retrieved from your (and other libraries') Z39.50-compatible catalogs

Libraries subscribing additionally to the WorldCat database as part of their FirstSearch package can also create custom library groups. Your users can then limit their search results to libraries in your defined group.

If your library subscribes to WorldCat Resource Sharing, staff can create interlibrary loan requests directly within FirstSearch administrative screens, vastly improving your productivity:

• Find materials
• Display holdings and enter lender strings
• Enter shipping information, billing information and borrowing notes
• Send requests into WorldCat Resource Sharing

Administrative controls in FirstSearch also let you adjust whether your users can create loan requests from FirstSearch databases, plus how they do it:

• Select the databases from which users can submit requests and the method used to process the requests for each
• Control access to request function by type of document requested, using WorldCat classifications
• Activate sending of ILL requests via e-mail (regardless of whether you use WorldCat Resource Sharing)
• Adjust your ILL request form, including form field behaviors and display, data persistence and special notes to users

Link users from FirstSearch results and detailed records to other internal and external resources, including:

• Your online catalog (OPAC), Web home page or other Web services (such as a virtual reference desk)
• Z39.50 catalogs
• Other full text services, such as JSTOR and Infotrieve
• Resources connected by OpenURL links, with control of icons or text displayed
• Online booksellers or information partners
• Translation via Linguistic Systems Inc.'s Select Translation Service
• Web search engines

In many cases, linked content is presented inside a FirstSearch frame with a Return button.

View usage statistics from the most recent 25 months to help you track user capacity and evaluate which databases are searched most often. Statistics may be viewed at the consortium, subgroup and institution levels, and include data on authorizations, sessions and turnaways, searches, documents ordered and port capacity/limits. This helps you:

• Make adjustments to how you buy databases or journals, or to the number of simultaneous logons you have purchased
• See which low-usage subscriptions you may want to promote
• Change user limits on databases for mid-year additions or annual renewals

Context-sensitive help for administrative functions is just a click away in a separate, printable window. Link back to the help table of contents, or search the entire help library by keywords.

A more detailed explanation of the administrative module is available through the Reference Guide in our Support section.