OpenAthens Community Borrower Registration

The Five Colleges each provide various borrowing privileges to groups that are neither employed at nor attending the schools. These patrons may be alums, local residents, state residents, visiting scholars, or others. To access the “My Account” features of Discovery, including requests and loan information, these patrons will need to have accounts created for them in OpenAthens as well as in FOLIO.

If you need to create OpenAthens accounts for unaffiliated borrowers but do not have the ability to do so, please contact the OpenAthens admin at your institution:

Amherst: Johanna Radding, jradding@amherst.edu
Hampshire: Jen Bolmarcich, jbolmarcich@hampshire.edu
Mt. Holyoke: Tim Dannay, tdannay@mtholyoke.edu or Sara Colglazier, scolglaz@mtholyoke.edu
Smith: Jenna Lanterman, jlanterman@smith.edu
UMass: Jack Mulvaney, jmulvaney@library.umass.edu or Jaime Taylor, jaimetaylor@umass.edu

Log into FOLIO & navigate to the Users app.
In the upper right hand corner, click the “Actions” menu drop down and select “New.”
Create unaffiliated user record in FOLIO using the following conventions:
Last name: Patron’s last name
First name: Patron’s first name
Patron group: [relevant patron group]
Status: Active
Expiration date:
Barcode: [patron barcode]
External system ID: [patron barcode]@[institution].edu
Username: [patron barcode]
Email: email address
Phone: phone number
Preferred contact: [select]
Click on “Save & Close” at the bottom right to save the record.
Log into OpenAthens (OpenAthens Admin)
From the OpenAthens Dashboard click on “Create account."
Fill in the pop-up as follows:
1. Choose a username: [patron barcode]
2. Login by email address: leave checked
3. Expires on: Choose expiration date
4. Create account and: Leave checked “Email an activation code to the user”
Click “Next” at the pop-up’s lower right.
Fill in the next screen as follows:
1. First name(s):
2. Last name:
3. Email address: [email address in FOLIO]
Click Next
On the next screen:
1. Select a group (if using - can create a new group from here)
2. Skip all except the last field on this page
3. externalSystemID: [patron barcode]@[institution].edu (External system ID from FOLIO - this MUST match exactly for EDS accounts to work!)
Click Next
Click Create account.
You will see a green success pop-up at the top of the screen and an account activation email is sent to the email address above.