Draft Minutes, InC-Library Collaboration, Phase 2, May 15, 2009
*Attending*
Steve Carmody, Brown University (chair)
Adam Chandler, Cornell University
Paul Hill, MIT
Thomas Howell, Northwestern University
Andy Ingram, University of North Carolina
Dave Kennedy, Duke University
John Kiser, University of Pennsylvania
Jonathan Lavigne, Stanford University
Tim Mori, North Carolina State
Kent Percival, University of Guelph
Ernest Shaw, University of Missouri
Heather Townes White, University of Saskatchewan
Dean Woodbeck, Internet2 (scribe)
*NOTE: Important Changes*
The use case and walk-in subgroups have been combined.
The subgroups will meet weekly for the next three weeks.
The vendor subgroup will keep the Friday, 1 p.m. (EDT) time and meet May 22, May 29, and June 5.
Thomas Howell will poll the use case subgroup members, seeking a different day/time to meet (but it will meet weekly, starting next week)
*Action Items*
(AI) Steve Carmody will provide the vendor subgroup with contact information for those if the top 10 vendors that are members of the U.K. federation.
(AI) Steve Carmody will follow-up with OhioLink concerning an offer to share the code for using attributes to authenticate people in the III system.
(AI) Thomas Howell will poll use case subgroup members about a meeting day/time.
(AI) Steve Carmody will work with the U.K. federation to get a list of contacts at their content providers as a place to start with the NISO effort.
*Vendor Subgroup Summary - May 1 Call*
Charge
1. Develop a prioritized list of information providers (e.g. JSTOR, Science Direct, etc) that the group would like to have support Shibboleth-enabled access.
2. Determine which resources already support Shibboleth.
3. Identify the top priorities for making the business case to support Shib. Include information about which vendors are already associated with InCommon. Use this information to create the beginnings of a registry of Shibboleth-enabled resources.
Goals
The group has identified three goals to complete in the coming few months:
1. Prioritize a list of resources that will strengthen the use case for Shibboleth
2. Document recommendations for resource providers
3. Develop a registry of compliant resources, beginning with prioritized resources
Organization of Work
In order to meet these goals, the following tasks have been laid out:
• Document a list of prioritized resources to target initially
• Document recommendations for resource providers/criteria for compliance
• Determine information to collect from resource providers and create registry framework (checklist)
• Contact priority vendors, but first agree on common approach to doing this
• Test resource providers for compliance
There was a suggestion to add, to the vendors listed on the wiki, the hosted ILLIAD service of both OCLC and Atlas.
In looking at resource providers that already support Shibboleth, the subgroup is looking at vendors that are already members of the U.K. federation. Seven of the 10 top vendors identified by the subgroup are in the U.K. federation. (AI) Steve Carmody will provide the subgroup with the contacts for those vendors. Kent Percival also has some contact information through his work with the Canadian federation.
*Use Case Subgroup Summary*
Thomas Howell and Ann West were the only participants in the use case subgroup call. Thomas continues work on information to standardize the use cases. If additional InC-Library participants are interested in the use case subgroup, please contact Thomas directly.
*Walk-in Subgroup Summary*
Those on the call went through the methods that two universities now handle walk-ins. The discussion also covered whether users with different types of affiliations can access various resources. Both of these universities, for example, have "friends of the library" groups with users listed in the library ILS system, but not in the campus identity management system. There are different access restrictions on these affiliates, vs. faculty and staff, vs. walk-in users. The subgroup will post notes to the wiki and will move toward developing a set of generic use cases.
There was further discussion about friends of the library groups and the range of access such users are provided. There are several campuses where any walk-in user, physically located in the library, has access to all resources. Friends of the library members, however, do not have such access just based on that credential. Generally, libraries that also serve as federal document repositories must offer full access to walk-ins.
*eduRoam*
Canada has recently deployed eduRoam throughout the country, which allows campus visitors to use their home credentials to accomplish a federated login to wireless networks on campuses. One key question is whether licenses allow those accessing the network via eduRoam to gain access to protected resources. Steven Carmody reported that a U.S. campus may soon be taking the lead on deploying eduRoam in the U.S.
Paul Hill reported that he believes from recent discussions that librarians at MIT would say that eduRoam users should have access privileges based on their home institution's licenses. MIT librarians are in the process of concluding that IP access control is no longer viable.
Steven mentioned that OhioLink, with 80+ campuses, are using attributes to authenticate people in the III systems and has offered to make their code available. (AI) Steven will pursue that offer.
*Effectiveness of Subgroup Approach*
There was general agreement that the subgroup approach should prove to be effective to make quick progress on a range of problems. The vendor group seems to have already achieved critical mass. The other two groups need to generate momentum and it was suggested that they be combined, given that some of their work overlaps. It was agreed that the use case and walk-in subgroups will be combined.
There was discussion as to the timing and frequency of calls, as well as whether the subgroups should meet during several of the next call times. The group agreed that the subgroups will meet for the next three weeks in a row, with the full group next meeting on June 12.
The vendor subgroup will meet on the next three Fridays at 1 p.m. (May 22, May 29, and June 5). The use case subgroup will meet for the next three weeks, but will explore a different day and time for those meetings. (AI) Thomas Howell will poll subgroup members about a meeting time.
*NISO Update*
Adam Chandler provided an update on the NISO project to standardize the user experience with vendors. The group is in the process of setting up its membership and has a list of about 25 people who have volunteered or are targeted for recruitment. Adam has a concern that only three content providers are represented and is pushing to recruit more, since they will need to act on the recommendations. (AI) Steve will work with the U.K. federation to get a list of contacts at their content providers as a place to start with the NISO effort.
Steve also reported that JISC has awarded Cardiff University a contract to study the user experience when using federated access to services, with an eye to improving the experience and making it more consistent across provider sites. Rhys Smith from Cardiff will lead the survey. The JISC contact is Mark Williams.
*Chat Summary*
There was discussion in the chat room about these topics:
EZproxy and Illiad - will this combination be well covered by a subgroup? It was suggested that, for this topic and others, for InC-Library members to make sure the use cases cover their situations.
EZProxy and Resources: What the average number of resources other universities are exposing via their EZProxy instance?
MIT - I think we serve something like 350 data resources via EZproxy.
Missouri - We have 1219 resource title entries in our config.
UPenn - A quick and dirty grep of our ezproxy.cfg shows we're proxying well over 800 resources
*Next Call: Vendor Subgroup, Friday, May 22, 1:00 p.m. EDT*
**Next Call: Use Case Subgroup, TBA
*Next Full InC-Library Meeting, Friday, June 12, 1:00 p.m. EDT*