Cornell Institutional Profile
Situation / background
Institutional description: size, location
Cornell University Ithaca
Cornell University main campus: |
Ithaca, NY |
Founded: |
1865 |
Enrollment: |
19,639 |
Undergraduate students: |
13,562 |
Graduate and professional students: |
6,077 |
Number of faculty: |
1,627 |
Chief administrator |
President David J. Skorton |
Students choose from among 4,000 courses in 11 undergraduate, graduate, and professional schools, including the nation's first colleges devoted to hotel administration, industrial and labor relations, and veterinary medicine. Many undergraduates participate in a wide range of interdisciplinary programs, play meaningful roles in original research, and study in Cornell programs in Washington, New York City, and the world over.
Cornell Medical College in NYC
Cornell University's New York City presence stretches from the southern tip of Manhattan, up the island to Lenox Hill on the Upper East Side. The urban campus mirrors many of the features of the Ithaca campus and houses:
* Alumni Affairs and Development
* Architecture, Art, and Planning
* Cornell Club
* Cornell Cooperative Extension
* Cornell Financial Engineering Manhattan
* ILR School
* New York City Communications
* Weill Cornell Medical College
* Weill Graduate School of Medical Sciences
In addition to these physical locations, New York City hosts numerous events and programs that originate from the Ithaca campus. These include: pre-law and pre-med programs, executive education, graduate studies, research, degree programs, faculty joint appointments, internships, continuing education and events sponsored by colleges and units, Alumni Affairs and Development, Undergraduate Admissions, and Athletics and Physical Education.
Cornell Medical College in Qatar
Now in its sixth year of operation, Weill Cornell Medical College in Qatar (WCMC-Q) offers young people an unprecedented opportunity to access a world-class medical education in the Gulf region.
Cornell is the first American university ever to offer its M.D. degree outside the United States. In the context of Qatar, WCMC-Q is leading the way as the country's first medical school and coeducational higher learning institution.
The establishment of the Medical College followed the signing, on January 25, 2001, of an Agreement between Cornell University and Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, a private, not-for-profit organization set up in 1995 by His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Emir of the State of Qatar.
Cornell was only the second university to open a branch in Education City in Doha. The flagship project of Qatar Foundation, this campus has a key role in transforming Qatar into a knowledge economy for the twenty-first century.
Teaching started in the two-year Pre-medical Program in fall 2002. The Medical Program opened two years later; the Inaugural Class is due to graduate in 2008.
WCMC-Q shares the triple mission of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, of which it is a branch: a commitment to excellence in education, patient care and research.
Other facilities:
- Cornell in Washington, DC
- Cornell/ILR School satellite in NYC
- Cornell/ILR School satellite in Albany
- Cornell/ILR School satellite in Buffalo
- Cornell Center for Policy Research, Washington, DC
- Cornell/ILR School satellite in Rochester
- Cornell/Nat'l Astronomy & Ionosphere Center, Arecibo, PR
- Vet Lab on Synder Hill, Ithaca, NY
- Cornell Theory Center in NYC
- Cornell University Press in Ithaca
- Cornell Cooperative Extension in New York State
- Geneva, NY
Number of libraries
Composed of 20 libraries, Cornell University Library is one of the largest academic research libraries in the U.S. The library's services are designed to provide easy access to our outstanding collections.
Factors affecting authentication - user affiliations, locations, multi site-licensed resources
Each of the three campuses (Ithaca, Weill, Qatar) has its own licensing unit. In addition, the Ithaca campus licenses many resources for all Cornell facilities. We have three main authorization types: All Cornell all over the world; All Cornell all over the world minus the Weill campus; world (open access).
Each of the three campuses uses its own method for remote authentication to licensed resources. Ithaca uses Kerberos, Weill uses a VPN, and Qatar uses a proprietary system from Innovative Interfaces Inc., a library technology company.
User issues - anything not covered by authentication
Production library environment: eg use of a portal (eg Metalib), proxy and/or vpn for off-campus access, link resolver, ILL, etc.
Each of the three campuses has its own separate suite of technology solutions. The following are the main relevant components used by the Ithaca campus:
- Ex Libris Voyager ILS
- Innovative Interfaces Inc. (III) Electronic Resources Management System
- Innovative Interfaces Inc. (III) WebBridge link resolver
- Ezproxy
Issues to solve with pilot
Our production Shibboleth implementation has been restricted to the ILLiad ILL software so far.
Challenges
Our main challenge is our perception about the cost benefit of implementing Shibboleth / Ezproxy integration. To date, we haven't seen that it is worth the effort.
Cornell Projects
Motivation
The Cornell University Library (ICUL) in Ithaca, Cornell Information Technologies (CIT) in Ithaca, and the Weill Cornell Medical Center (WCMC) in New York City are investigating various methods to make access to licensed library content more seamless. Historically, the libraries at both campuses have operated independently. The libraries have two different funding mechanisms and organizational reporting structure. Content may be licensed for one campus, but not the other. Further complication is caused by WCMC's close working relationship to two other institutions in New York City, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center and The Rockefeller University. With print journals, cooperative collection development was possible between the three Manhattan partners. Now days, staff from each institution still walk over to the other building and log in to library computers for electronic access to something not available at their home institution, but faculty and grad students are demanding seamless access to everything. The old model is broken.
Out of this has come a growing interest in investigating how Shibboleth might be used to solve authorization problems. CUL uses ezproxy for remote access to licensed library content. WCMC uses VPN, or WebVPN.
How do we create a Shibboleth-based model to address today's problems that can be extended into the future?
Case 1: Users Moving Between Two Campuses
These diagrams describe some of the use cases we have investigated having to do with users who move between the Weill and Ithaca campuses, and may only have a NetID from one campus. We look at access through the library website and also access directly to a URL. Solutions involve both Shibboleth and VPN. Our current Ithaca VPN client uses split tunneling so that a user will get a Cornell IP address when going to sites on campus, but will use their ISP IP address when going to sites off campus. We are investigating adding the IP addresses of external library resources to our VPN configuration until the external resources are shibbolized.
Case 2: Off-Campus Library Users
We are presently using Shibboleth for authentication into our Atlas Systems hosted Illiad ILL service. Single Sign On access to this service is popular and highly valued. Shibboleth is a perfect fit, the only way we could extend SSO to this service.
When the patron is off campus, how can we facilitate easy access to licensed content when the user discovers it from systems beyond the scope of our institutional sites? From our perspective, we should shift some of the energy of this InCommon Library initiative to focus on horizontal linking across licensed resources, from the open Web -- search engines, Google Scholar, etc. Placing the Shibboleth login into those spaces is a valuable use case.
Adam Chandler is working with NISO to pull together project that would explore in more detail the use cases and possible best practices needed to address horizontal linking from the open web into licensed content.