Current Situation
All staff and students have a unique Athens account (which is referred to as your classic Athens account), which looks like ‘suraa012345’. To gain access to any Athens protected web site you prove who you are by entering your classic Athens account name and password at an Athens login prompt before the web site will allow you to view the desired content. Note if you joined the University after 30th June 2006 a classic Athens account would not have been created for you.
As from 19 July 2006
A ‘local authentication’ system is being introduced. The new system is known as AthensDA (Athens Devolved Authentication).
To gain access to Athens protected resources you would still need to ‘login to Athens’, but now by entering your University computing account name and password instead of the classic Athens account details. AthensDA alleviates the need for separate Athens account names and passwords to be created and remembered.
AthensDA is available wherever you are, On-Campus and Off-Campus.
You will still be able to use your classic Athens account during a short change-over period, but this will expire during Semester 1 of the next academic year, so we will encourage people to switch over as soon as possible.
How to get started
In order to use your University computing username and password you simply use your browser to login at the University of Surrey Athens Login prompt page. There are two ways to get this page.
By going directly to login page, entering your credentials, so establishing an Athens session (which continues until you close the browser window), before visiting the online resources you want to search.
2. By creating a cookie on your computer. Then whenever you attempt to access an Athens protected resource you will be automatically directed to our Athens login page, after logging in you will have an Athens session established and can continue to visit other online resources (until the browser window is closed). You only need to create the cookie once if you use the same computer.
Both methods can be used and interchanged, but for your convenience we recommend you create the cookie on your computer and then forget about it.
To go directly to the login page or set the cookie please visit the new Online Library page http://portal.surrey.ac.uk/Library/Online where there are links to accomplish both methods, as well as a link to a FAQ section about AthensDA.
For convenience the Student Open Access PCs will have the cookie automatically set, as any student can be using many different computers and would not wish to have to set the cookie for each one they use.
