OpenAthens Community Borrower Registration

Owned by Jaime Taylor
Last updated: Aug 25, 2023
4 min read

[NOTE: To create a staff admin account, see this OpenAthens doc.]

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. The matchpoints between FOLIO and Discovery are the Username (which is the patron’s barcode) and the External System ID (which is [barcode]@[institution].edu.)

If you need to create OpenAthens accounts for unaffiliated borrowers (part 2 below) but do not have the ability to do so, please contact the OpenAthens admin at your institution:

OpenAthens Administrators by School

Part 1. How To Create A Community User Account in FOLIO

  1. Log into FOLIO & navigate to the Users app.

    Choose Users App label

  2. In the upper right hand corner, click the “Actions” menu drop down and select “New.”

    The 'New' action is the first item in the Actions menu.

  3. Create unaffiliated user record in FOLIO using the following conventions (for community borrowers that were migrated from Aleph, you will have to edit existing information):
    Field: [Enter this information]
    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]

  4. Click on “Save & Close” at the bottom right to save the record.

    Save and Close button

Part 2. How To Create A Community User Account in OpenAthens

  1. Log into OpenAthens (OpenAthens Admin)

  2. From the OpenAthens Dashboard click on “Create account."

  3. Fill in the pop-up as follows:

    1. Choose a username: [patron barcode]

    2. Login by email address: leave checked*****(see note at bottom about community borrowers with accounts at more than one school)

    3. Expires on: Choose expiration date

    4. Create account and: Leave checked “Email an activation code to the user”

  4. Click “Next” at the pop-up’s lower right.

  5. Fill in the next screen as follows:

    1. First name(s): 

    2. Last name:

    3. Email address: [email address in FOLIO]

  6. Click Next

  7. 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!)

  8. Click Next

  9. Click Create account.

  10. 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.

Example of email to borrower:

Follow the link to activate your account:

https://login.openathens.net/activateaccount?username=amh210212300&activation_code=

Here is your OpenAthens username: amh2102123002

If you cannot follow the link, please copy and paste it into your browser.

Having troubles? Contact Amherst College Library at library@amherst.edu.

All the best.

Your OpenAthens account support

Need help?  Contact a Librarian!

COMMUNITY BORROWERS WITH MULTIPLE ACCOUNTS

With our standard settings for account creation, OpenAthens does not allow for more than one account to be created using the same email address. If you attempt to do so, you will not be able to create the second (or third, etc) account. To work around this, do the following:

  1. When OpenAthens tells you there is already an account with the email address you are trying to use, return to the first step of the OpenAthens account creation window.

  2. Uncheck the box that says “Login by email address,” highlighted here in yellow:

  3. You should now be able to create the patron’s second account.

  4. Unlike with their first account, where the patron can log into OpenAthens/Discovery using their email address as the username, subsequent accounts can only be logged into with the username we create (circled in red in the above image), which is the External system ID from their FOLIO record: [patron barcode]@[institution].edu.

  5. Everything else about both the patron registration process, in both FOLIO and OpenAthens, and the patron experience remains the same for subsequent accounts as it is for first accounts.