Federated Library Applications
Description
Federations allow users to share resources within an agreed-upon trust fabric. Based on the work of the Internet2 Middleware Initiative (NMI) a federation called InCommon has been created to support collaboration for education and research. Penn State, a member of InCommon, uses the Shibboleth architecture on which the InCommon Federation is built. Shibboleth provides Single SignOn capability for Web-based applications, both within an organization and between organizations. External resources licensed by campus libraries could be major users of Shibboleth.
Penn State is working with several collaborators, which include the University of Chicago, the University of Calilfornia--San Diego, the University System of Maryland, and the Consortium of Libraries in an effort to encourage their campuses' respective libraries to employ Shibboleth. This group has been able to explore and to identify hurdles that campus libraries need to overcome in adopting Shibboleth. The charter for this group is as follows:
Identify technology, user experience, policy, and practice issues related to incorporating the use of Shibboleth into the processes that campus members use to access external licensed resources. Identify possible approaches, pilot their use, and evaluate their effectiveness. Report on what has been learned.
Publications
N/A
Resources
Primary ET Contact
Renee Shuey, RShuey@psu.edu
Collaborators
Digital Library Technologies
University Libraries
Expected Deliverable(s)
White paper identifying and assessing possible issues in adopting Shibboleth in the library community.
Level of ET Involvement
ET has a high level of involvement.
Initiative Start Date
April 2007 (will end September 2007)