Shibboleth and Library Resources

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Shibboleth and Library Resources

• Internet2 Library/Shibboleth Project

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What is the Library/Shibboleth Project?

• Established 2007
• Five universities Internet2
• Campus IT, Library IT, Librarians

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Library concerns with Shibboleth enabled
electronic resources

• Communication with campus IT
• Privacy
• Privacy with individual vendors
• Privacy across vendors
• Session persistence
• Walk-in users
• Library patron database integration

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Electronic resources background

• Ten years of growth
• Prevalence of home computing
• Increase in distance education
• Convenience and user expectation
• Hundreds of vendors, thousands of resources
• Significant part of the library collection budget
• Access and use restrictions
• Substantial work to integrate this seamlessly

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Electronic resource challenges

• Remote access is problematic
• Maintaining IPs is time consuming and unreliable

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Focus of Library/Shibboleth

• Access control and licensed electronic resources
• Identify user scenarios
• Document business practice and technology issues
• Test solutions

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Technologies

• Shibboleth
• EZproxy
• mod_auth_location

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What is Shibboleth?

• Open source standards-based web single sign-on
  package
• Leverages local identity management system
• Enables access to campus and external
  applications
• Protects users privacy
• Helps your service partners
• Plays well with others

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Shibboleths benefits

• Single sign on
• E-resource personalization
• Usage statistics
• Reduction in trouble tickets

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What is EZproxy?

• Server side proxy (URL rewriting)
• Proxy access for off-campus resources
• Inexpensive
• Library-focused
• SSO authentication

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EZproxys benefits

• On/off campus consistency
• Persistent URL
• Hybrid solution
• Single place where you point your URLs!
• Simple URL creation

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What is mod_auth_location?

• Apache module
• Guest authentication by location (IP)
• Used in conjunction with Shib

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mod_auth_locations benefits

• Local IP management
• Walk in user

limitations

• Override guest access

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What are the benefits?

• Benefits to users
• Single sign on
• Personalization
• Benefits to librarians
• Manage IPs locally (mod_auth_location)
• Support
• Benefit to library administration
• Tracking of usage

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Maryland as Case Study

• Implemented Shibboleth 2005
• Shibboleth enabled library services
• Metalib, Aleph, ILLiad, EZproxy, (SFX)
• SSO with electronic resources
• Persistent URLs though EZproxy
• Campus integration projects
• Blackboard, Portal

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What can you do?

• Get EZproxy!
• Implement Shibboleth locally
• Explore local issues and concerns with your
  library
• Pilot existing SSO vendors
• Discuss interest in SSO to commercial vendors

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Next steps Library/Shibboleth Project

• Recommending best practices and solutions to
  common use cases
• Conducting pilots to validate approaches
• Encourage adoption of Shibboleth by US
  institutions and libraries
• Community information sharing

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Shibboleth-enabled information providers

• American Chemical Society
• Atlas (ILLiad/ARES)
• Atypon
• CSA
• EBSCO
• Elsevier Science Direct
• Ex Libris
• EZprozy
• JSTOR
• Literary Encyclopedia

• OCLC WorldCAT
• OVID/SilverPlatter
• Project MUSE
• Proquest
• Safari (underway)
• SCRAN
• Serials Solutions
• Springer
• Thomson Gale
• Thomson ISI (underway)

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More information

• https//spaces.internet2.edu/display/InCCollaborat
  e/LibraryPilot
• davekenn_at_umd.edu