Athens

What is Athens?
Athens is a system used by UK higher education institutions to manage access to electronic resources, also known as e-resources, usually when users are off-campus, but in a few cases when on-campus as well. Queen Mary, University of London uses AthensLA (LA = Local Authentication), a locally managed version of Athens.

Athens accounts
To login via Athens, taught undergraduate and postgraduate students should use their Queen Mary Student Service username and password (these login credentials are allocated by IT Services). Staff and researchers need to contact IT Services to obtain a Student Service account if they do not already have one.

Using Athens
When logging into an Athens compliant e-resource, users will be re-directed to the Queen Mary Athens Login page. In order to simplify the Athens login procedure, a Queen Mary Athens Web browser 'cookie' should be installed so the system 'knows' which institution users are affiliated with. A Queen Mary Athens cookie should be set once on each browser used on- and off-campus (if browser cookies are deleted this process will need to repeated). To install a Queen Mary Athens cookie, click here (a new window will open) and then click on the "Go to the Queen Mary and Westfield College login page ยป" link.

Please note that some e-resources are no longer Athens compliant, and now require users to login via the UK Federation.

Accessing e-resources
A single point of access to all of the e-resources that Queen Mary subscribes to is provided via MetaLib. To login to MetaLib, taught students should use their Student Service username and password, and researchers and staff should use their Central Services (IMAP) user name and password. Once logged into MetaLib, users are also logged into Athens, as well as the Library Services Proxy Server, for the duration of a browser session.

Help
For assistance with Athens accounts, please contact IT Services Liaison:

For assistance accessing subscribed e-resources, or questions about which resources Queen Mary subscribes to, please contact e-resources help: