Situation: Your class is using the INSPIRE interface to do research in INSPIRE. Several students report that they are getting search results unrelated to their searches. After investigating further, you find that the results for one student's search for "ravioli" are showing up on another student's computer. The second student had searched for "earthworm." Why are you getting these unappetizing results?
Solution: This needs to be discussed with your school technical staff. The settings on your school's proxy server most likely caused the scrambled results. The proxy server may be caching web pages and returning them to the wrong computers. Your proxy server needs to be set so it does not cache any web page with a question mark ? in its URL. In some proxy servers this is the default setting.
As an example, in the INSPIRE interface each user is assigned a unique session ID number that appears in the URL, just after the question mark there. (This number is not actually visible on your web browser until you log out of INSPIRE.) This session number helps servers keep track of searches and results.
INSPIRE, the Indiana Virtual Library, is a service of the libraries of Indiana through INCOLSA (www.incolsa.net) and is funded by the residents of Indiana through the Indiana General Assembly, and by the Indiana State Library through a federal LSTA grant.