Notes - conference call - 6/5/09
Vendor subgroup minutes
Jonathan Lavigne (Stanford)
Andy Ingham (UNC)
Foster Zhang (JHU)
David Kennedy (Duke)
Kent Percival (Guelph)
Notes by Kennedy
----
Agenda
- where is each institution in terms of shibboleth and ezproxy
- our constantly shifting plans - what is our current plan of attack
- the larger InC-Library group and moving ahead
----
Action Items:
- Kennedy will check in with Steven and Ann about inviting vendors to join calls
- Kennedy will contact Cardiff University
- Any and all will proceed with gathering information from our tests with vendors
---
In terms of where we each are now:
Kennedy - Duke has a test ezproxy set up. Will be ready to test in the next week or so.
Ingham - Chapel Hill has a production ezproxy. Is working with their test ezproxy and Shibboleth. Will likely started working with EBSCO in the next week - 10 days
Note that there is no expectation of a shibbolized ezproxy to participate in the group
Lavigne - Stanford - not a lot of use of Shibboleth yet at Stanford. Doesn't have a test ezproxy yet, working towards it and will continue to participate in this group.
Our constantly shifting plans:
Foster started experimenting with Shibboleth/EZproxy and vendors to get his hands wet, to understand and be informed. He has shared with the group what he has learned. This has helped us learn a lot as a group.
Foster talked about his process for approaching vendors. Gaining information if available just by searching google. Sometimes takes time to get to the right people at a vendor.
Foster proposed adding Oxford and Sage as next vendors to work with, identified them as good candidates.
Kent noted that most if not all of the vendors that we have identified have been leaders in this field, and in the UK, a very strong group.
We discussed ways to collaborate with vendors and other groups doing similar things so that we aren't spinning our wheels. We discussed inviting vendors to a large conference call. We discussed what would be the makeup of that call and what we would hope to accomplish. Ultimately, we decided against the large conference call for now, opted to gain more experience first.
We put Foster on the spot - are there things that need to be changed? is there one vendor that stands out as a model? Even in the three vendors that Foster has dealt with, there are variations in practice. Some things we might want to see: a uniform url structure for session initiation and agreement on attribute names, also there are currently two url formats (maybe more?)
We might want to learn more information before we start telling vendors what we want them to do. We should try to get to a point where we have a lot of experience. Decided to invite Elsevier and Ebsco reps to join our calls. [AI] Kennedy will check with Steven and Ann
We might also learn from what is going on in the UK right now, a similar effort. Dean emailed to us. [AI] Kennedy will follow up with that group
We will continue to gather more information individually working with vendors.
Inc-Library group and moving forward
Kennedy will report back to the larger group next week on our progress and plans.
We agreed that we will propose another set of 3 weekly phone calls for our subgroup.
Foster shared some very positive feedback that he has gotten from switching to Shibboleth. Users' experience has been improved by switching from ezproxy (with entire session proxied) to hybrid ezproxy/shib approach, because it is faster from off-campus. There was a noticeable improvement from reference staff that it is faster.
Kennedy mentioned the Issues Encountered wiki page (password protected) in case there are relevant issues to share privately
Kennedy mentioned that the wiki allows for Watching pages or the space for updates