Minutes - InC-Library Collaboration - January 28, 2010
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Attending
Steven Carmody, Brown University (chair)
Adam Chandler, Cornell University
Lynn Garrison, Penn State University
Thomas Howell, Northwestern University
Andy Ingham, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill
Dave Kennedy, Duke University
Paul Hill, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ernest Shaw, University of Missouri
Rich Wenger, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Dean Woodbeck, Internet2 (scribe)
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Vendor Subgroup
David Kennedy provided an update on the work of the vendor subgroup. He presented a webinar on January 15, 2010, with 55 in attendance (the webinar was archived and is available with the link from www.incommon.org). Andy Ingham did a presentation the same day at the EDUCAUSE Mid-Atlantic conference. A link to his slides is also at www.incommon.org.
Based on the survey results, vendor subgroup members have sent emails to targeted vendors on behalf of a group of universities asking that they consider joining InCommon. Dave has talked with several in the last week, including Thomson Reuters, American Chemical Society, Cambridge University Press, Springer and BioOne. Several are interested in InCommon; Thomson Reuters and BioOne are well along on the path to joining InCommon.
Dave also contacted each of the survey participants and received feedback about the Shibboleth/EZProxy approach. There is additional interest in going after services that are personalized, which would also help with the business case.
He has also received questions from vendors as to just how many institutions are actually using Shib. All of the survey respondents are, but there are others, as well. One next step may be to make an active effort to find this information and to actively encourage universities to contact vendors, volunteer for pilots, and otherwise make it known that they are using Shib.
Adam mentioned the work from NISO, in terms of providing the ability to connect to licensed content from the open web. Steven suggested a related case where someone is already logged in to Google, because their campus outsources email to Google, and goes through Google Apps for Education to find a resource - you would expect the SSO window to enable access to licensed resources.
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Use Case Subgroup
Thomas outlined the progress the use case subgroup has made on its approach:
- develop a bedtime story to describe in plain language what to explore in the use case
- develop the use case that explains the business case to a non-technical person
- prepare UML flow diagrams that demonstrate how the process works
- develop case studies to provide additional details
The group has made a lot of progress on Shib-enabled EZProxy cases and are working on bedtime stories for the ILS use case, the walk-in use case, and the multi-campus/consortium use case.
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I2 Spring Member Meeting
Thomas, Dave and Paul are submitting a proposal for the Internet2 Spring Member Meeting (April 26-28, 2010, in Arlington, VA). The session would describe the work of both subgroups to a non-librarian audience. The approach will be to show how using InCommon and Shibboleth has solved some complex use cases and that this approach is gaining traction in the library community and addressing privacy issues.
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Other Conferences
Andy Ingham is planning to submit proposal to the LITA National Forum, to be held in Atlanta GA, September 30 - October 3, 2010. 2010. This library-specific venue is a good intersection of technology and libraries. If anyone is interested in helping/participating, please contact Andy.
Other conferences of interest would be CNI, a publisher-oriented conference called the Charleston Conference (November), and the InCOmmon CAMP (June 21-23 in Raleigh, NC).
Since the webinar was so well attended, it would also be advantages to continue to develop ways to report to the community.
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NISO update
The NISO effort seems to be gaining traction and will address concerns of both SPs and IdPs. A growing SP concern is the process of joining and participating in multiple federations. An IdP concern is making the discovery process much more user-friendly.
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Shibboleth
Steven announced a prototype of new discovery process; he hopes to have a URL to share more widely within the next two weeks. This is something an SP could point at, so the SP wouldn't need to be modified, and it should work with all Shib deployments.
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Next Steps
The vendor subgroup will meet on February 5 and February 19 (1 p.m. EST). The use case subgroup will also be announcing meetings.
The next full InC-Library collaboration meeting will be Friday, March 26, 1 p.m. EDT.