InCommon Library Services Working Group, Minutes, September 5, 2008
*Attending*
Holly Eggleston, University of California-San Diego (chair)
Tom Barton, University of Chicago
Steven Carmody, Brown University
Adam Chandler, Cornell University
Declan Fleming, University of California-San Diego
Bill Jordan, University of Washington
Dave Kennedy, University of Maryland
Mairead Martin, Penn State University
R.L. "Bob" Morgan, University of Washington
Ann West, Internet2/EDUCAUSE
Dean Woodbeck, Internet2 (scribe)
*Action Items*
(AI) (ALL) Update/complete your institutional profile and project update by September 12. There is a page for each institution on the wiki:
https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/display/inclibrary/Working+Group+Use+Cases
*Federating the CIC Digital Repository*
Mairead Martin discussed the federating of a shared digital repository at CIC (Committee for Institutional Cooperation) schools, which include Big Ten institutions and the University of Chicago. The CIC identity management group was charged (by the member school chief information officers) to have Shibboleth in production by July 1. Three-quarters of the schools have met the deadline.
One of the first federated applications will be a shared digital repository (SDR), which was created by the CIC, member institutions and Google. Libraries at the CIC schools contracted with Google to digitize books and journals. Google will keep a copy of the materials and a copy will reside at the SDR, which is named HathiTrust. More information is available at http://uits.iu.edu/page/awac. Over the next few weeks, John Wilkin from the University of Michigan will lead a call with the CIC IdM group to discuss the technical details of federating HathiTrust.
R.L. Bob Morgan mentioned that there might be a good case study here for InCommon.
NJEdge is also pursuing a digital repository project; Grace Agnew (Rutgers) will present a session at the Internet2 Fall Member Meeting on the topic.
*OCLC*
Steven Carmody spoke with Don Hemparian from OCLC and Don would be interested in joining a call. Steven suggested the working group frame some specific questions for discussion to help Don prepare and keep the conversation on track.
*Institutional Profiles and Use Cases*
[AI](The Working Group) should post their institutional profiles and use cases by September 12. These will help prepare content for the public wiki pages and for the presentations coming up in October (EDUCAUSE and Internet2 Member Meeting). Templates and wiki pages are available at: https://spaces.at.internet2.edu/display/inclibrary/Working+Group+Use+Cases
*Presentations*
NASIG - Holly reported on her presentation to NASIG in June. The organization prepares an extensive summary of presentations from the conference for their publication, "Materials Librarian." The InC-Library presentation will appear in the journal in 2009.
EDUCAUSE - Holly asked for volunteers to help present at the EDUCAUSE meeting to be held in Orlando in October. The presentation will be a variation of that made at the Internet2 Member Meeting in New Orleans. Content includes a status report from the working group, as well as future plans.
*Deliverables and Timelines*
There was a general discussion about setting goals and benchmarks for future work and setting out a detailed path for the working group. Specifically, the working group agreed there needs to be a discussion about deliverables, a plan for developing those deliverables, and a timeline for completion.
There are some natural benchmarks, driven by planned presentations, including EDUCAUSE and the Internet2 Member Meeting in October 2008, and the NASIG and ALA meetings in June 2009.
There seems to be consensus on what procedures are usable and what the working group would want to implement. Some of the issues discussed:
• Expanding limited pilot projects to a broader test of technology, with working group members enabling more service providers.
• Outlining remaining questions related to proposed solutions and conducting tests to determine answers.
• Developing best practices for content providers. Adam Chandler reported that NISO (National Information Standards Organization) has been exploring something similar. He and Oliver Pesch of NISO are drafting a work item for NISO in this area.
• Advocating to service providers on standards needed to federate to make it easy for users.
• Advocating to service providers about the basic technology of federating and providing use cases.
• Developing information (such as white papers, use cases or other documents) on the hybrid Shibboleth/EZProxy solution to library access.
• Identifying the common licensed library vendors (probably 15-18) that represent 80-90 percent of the traffic for most libraries. Determining whether those vendors are Shib-enabled (many probably are through the UK federation), working with those vendors to join InCommon, and promoting federating among these vendors and libraries.
• Sharing case studies, documenting what works and what doesn't.
• Making contacts with peers in Europe to share experiences and use cases. There are a number of email lists which may help identify likely candidates. It may be useful for members of this working group to monitor those email lists, gathering information about general trends and identifying people with whom we might collaborate.
• Mapping the presentations (which are on the wiki) into more generic reports, suggestions and recommendations.
• Determining whether to open this group to a wider audience and, if so, when and how.
*Working Group Affiliation*
There was a discussion about whether this working group should affiliate itself with another organization, such as EDUCAUSE, NISO or CNI (Coalition for Networked Information), or an organization focused on libraries - not just in the context of Shibboleth, but in the context of federated activities.
Steven Carmody mentioned that Cliff Lynch at CNI has shown interest in this area in the past and that AuthN and AuthZ is on CNI's strategic plan and agenda. Steven said he would be willing to work on a charter and have a discussion about this with CNI.
It was suggested that, prior to such a discussion, the group should develop a summary of suggestions and recommendations and determine the tasks that need to be completed (see the list above).
This discussion will continue online and during the next call.
*Next call - Friday, September 19, 1:00 p.m. (EDT)*