InCommon Library Services Working Group Minutes
July 25, 2008
*Attending*
Holly Eggleston, University of California-San Diego (chair)
Steve Carmody, Brown University
Janis Mathewson, Penn State University
Renee Shuey, Penn State University
Mairead Martin, Penn State University
Ann West, Internet2/EDUCAUSE
Dean Woodbeck, Internet2 (scribe)
*Action Items*
(AI) (Holly) will send out a final version of the case study template after today's call.
(AI) (Each working group institution) will complete a draft of a case study by the next call (Aug. 8).
(AI) (Mairead) will talk with CIC (Committee for Institutional Cooperation) library directors about the progress made by the Library Services working group, given that all of the CIC institutions (the Big Ten plus the University of Chicago) are joining InCommon.
*Wiki Reorganiztion*
Dean has reorganized the InC-Library wiki in preparation for having a portion publicly available, while retaining a private portion. The public page will use the current InC-Library address:
https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/display/inclibrary/InC-Library
The front page has sections for introductory information about Shibboleth, suggested deployment strategies, presentations, and use cases. There is also a link to the working group pages, which will continue to be restricted to this group.
Please review the wiki and provide comments back to Dean (woodbeck@internet2.edu) or add information yourself.
*UCCSC Meeting*
Holly reported on the University of California Computing Services Conference, where she was part of a panel discussion on "different approaches to remote access to electronic library resources." Declan Fleming was also part of the panel. There was also a session on Shibboleth and federating presented by UCTrust.
*EZProxy Beta Testing*
EZProxy is looking for sites running Shib 1.3 that are interested in testing EZProxy 5.1 beta. Steve reported one school in the U.S. has responded, along with five in the U.K. He has forwarded those contacts to OCLC.
*Case Study Template*
Holly reviewed the latest version of the case study template. Each working group institution is asked to complete a case study. The document includes an institutional profile section and a project report section. The profile portion is intended to provide information about the institution and the problems that were to be solved by implementing Shibboleth and/or EZProxy. The project report section describes the pilot (including questions asked originally), the results (questions answered), next steps and lessons learned.
The case studies are intended to provide information to those interested in Shibboleth, including the variety of approaches used by the campuses involved in this project. The concept is for interested parties to be able to find a campus that is similar to their's and/or an approach that will fit their circumstances. These documents would demonstrate that, with the same building blocks, institutions have developed solutions in a variety of ways.
(AI) (Holly) will send out a final version of the template after today's call.
(AI) (The working group) agreed to complete drafts of case studies by the next call (Aug. 8). These documents will also be useful for presentations that are scheduled for this fall.
It was also suggested that working group members use the restricted area of the wiki to post information on what they see as their next steps, gathering feedback from the group. The public case studies and private information sheets will help as we develop consensus about best practices.
*Status of Working Group*
There was a discussion about whether the working group should develop some benchmarks, helping to determine when some phases of the library project may be over and developing next steps for the group. Such an exercise will be helpful and may result from the development of the case studies, which can be used to develop next steps and may form the beginnings for a best practices document.
*Campus Updates*
Penn State has RefWorks Shibbolized and in production. They are not using EZProxy for this application. Penn State plans to use stand-alone Shibboleth (without EZProxy), unless the vendor does not support Shib. In those situations, the university will use EZProxy.
Holly reported that the University of Washington reports problems with Shibbolizing RefWorks. They have found that the use of Shibboleth with RefWorks prevents professors from creating subaccounts (which enable them to post their own bibliographies). Penn State reported a conversation with RefWorks about this issue and RefWorks is supposed to be working on a solution. Janis will check with a PSU librarian for details. She will report back to the email list.
UCSD has JSTOR and ScienceDirect in production with Shibboleth. Holly reported that EBSCO referred her to InCommon to determine the necessary attributes. Steve reported that InCommon does not serve in this role; that it is EBSCO's responsibility to tell the IdP which attributes need to be asserted. There may be some confusion at EBSCO, since the UK federation does play this role. This same situation occurred between EBSCO and Penn State and was resolved to Penn State's satisfaction. This would be good information to have on the vendor page of the wiki, in case others run into a similar situation.
UCSD is looking at Shibbolizing their Web VPN. The VPN client will probably be used for remote access, including accessing library resources.
Renee Shuey reported that the CIC (Committee for Institutional Cooperation) schools are all joining InCommon. The CIC consists of the Big Ten schools plus the University of Chicago. It would be good to find a way to explore how these schools might become involved in the library space. The CIOs of these institutions will be looking for additional ways to leverage their InCommon memberships. The project reports will be helpful with this. (AI) (Mairead) will talk with CIC library directors about the progress made by the Library Services working group.
*Next call - Friday, August 8, 1:00 p.m. (EST)*