Minutes - InC-Library Collaboration - August 21, 2009
*Attending*
Steven Carmody, Brown University (chair)
Paul Hill, MIT
Dave Kennedy, Duke University
Jon Kiser, University of Pennsylvania
John Krienke, Internet2
Kent Percival, University of Guelph
Mark Scheible, North Carolina State University
Dean Woodbeck, Internet2 (scribe)
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Vendor Subgroup
Dave Kennedy reported that the group is working on best practices documentation for resource providers, focused on helping libraries to more easily implement the Shibboleth/EZProxy hybrid. Once draft is finished, the group will seek input from selected resource providers.
JSTOR will join the vendor subgroup call September 11, and plans are in the works to speak with another resource provider. The calls will inform the committee on its work, as well as helping the service providers know about the concerns of libraries. There has also been discussion of hosting a webinar and/or reporting out on best practices at the Internet2 Fall Member Meeting. Work continues on the registry of resources (on the wiki at: https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/display/inclibrary/Vendor+Subgroup).
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Federation Updates
Steven Carmody reported on some recent developments of interest.
JISC (the U.K. federation) has provided a very limited distribution of a draft report that looks at the discovery problem. This report should be up on the JISC wiki soon. The report's major recommendation calls for the 25 Shibboleth federations around the world work together, with vendors, to create a single brand for federated authentication. Vendors and federations would add this symbol on their home pages to begin providing some identity for federation participants. The report also explored the different WAYFs and discovery services that exist.
Earlier today, the Shibboleth project shipped a new version of the discovery services. One interesting development is a completion service - when you start to type the name of and IdP, the service presents a short list of potential matches.
A useful email list has bee dormant for a couple of years. It included federation managers and national-level reference librarians (from multiple federations), as well as a set of vendor representatives. The list was used in the past to reach consensus on issues of interest. As an example, the entitlement value, CommonLibTerms, emerged from this list. There is interest in resurrecting the list from Germany and from the U.K. Conversation on such a list might be useful for out vendor subgroup, when something is ready for review or comment.
On a related note, Kent mentioned that he may be speaking to the Canadian association of research libraries, which has a mandate to work with vendors on various issues.
Steven commented that vendors in this space will respond to a strong business case. In past years, it has been difficult in for U.S. libraries to make such a case, since licenses are done on campus level. But banding together as a group of libraries, and as a group of federations, would significantly assist this effort.
There is interest in an update on the NISO group, which was discussed earlier this summer.
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Use Case Subgroup
Steven reported that the subgroup has wrestled with the great variety and complexity of possible ways that campuses and libraries deploy all this software. Last week, the group came to consensus on starting with simple use cases, then moving to the more complex. In addition, there are a set of schools that have started to develop the Shibboleth and EZProxy hybrid and their efforts will be documented.
Paul sent an email to the use case list, looking at the progress on the EZProxy use case and the need to deal with much more variety and complexity. There are examples at MIT, for example, in which off-campus users go through the university's VPN and the MIT instance of EZproxy to access resources. In other cases, off-campus people do not use the VPN and have a different experience. It would be useful to either document such use cases, or at least compile a list of such cases.
There was discussion about the large number of possible options and the desirability to start with situations that are most common, get those documented, and acknowledge the more-complex cases for later work. One idea for a more focused approach: develop use cases that would apply to most libraries and would encourage them to look at federation.
Ultimately, the sales pitch for federating library service needs to come out of these discussions. It comes back to working through the original use case - the Shib/EZProxy hybrid. There is a tendency to describe use cases, but then start discussing infrastructure and implementation.
There was agreement to focus on the more-common or simpler use cases, but to compile a list of more-complex issues. Some of those might include
- assisting a vendor trying to track down inappropriate use of a resource
- off-campus patrons on commercial networks that do not go through the campus VPN
- use of strong libraries portals and VPNs for off-campus users
- making resources available in conjunction with partner libraries
- vendor pressure for people to access their sites directly, to provide value-adds.
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Next Calls
The subgroups will meet August 28, September 11 and September 18. The full library group will meet again on September 25.