Defining Use Cases for Federating Library Services

[Dean Woodbeck <>]

Notes
Library Use Case Subgroup Call
August 14, 2009

-----------
Attending

Steven Carmody, Brown University
Lynn Garrison, Penn State University
Tim Mori, North Carolina State University
Dean Woodbeck, Internet2

-----------
Needs/Outcomes

There was a general discussion about the needs and outcomes people are 
looking for from this group.

Penn State – 1) need to go through a process similar to Dave Kennedy’s 
during phase 1 (testing Shib and EZProxy and other applications), 2) 
attract additional Shibbolized vendors to Penn State, 3) identify 
additional local services offered by the library that are candidates for 
Shibboleth.

North Carolina State: 1) Shib-enabling the proxy system, 2) work the 
“friends of the library” group (and perhaps others) into the Shibbolized 
access to resources (currently, these people are only stored in the 
library ILS system), 3) plug these in to a campus federation.

-----------
Shibboleth/EZProxy Work Flow

A number of issues were discussed related to Shibboleth and EZProxy. 
They included:

1) Shib-enabling an EZProxy server.
2) Resolving issues related to a Shib-enabled EZProxy server. For example:

    a. Identifying all of the access points (like Google Scholar)
    b. Mapping the flow when someone goes to an access point like 
Google Scholar.
    c. Determining the types of entitlements required for different 
types of users (for example, those at the medical school may have access 
to some resources to which all other users do not have access).

3) Identify issues related to multiple licenses with a single vendor 
(i.e. some resources in Science Direct are available to medical students 
while other resources are available to the entire campus).
    a. Work with campus identity providers to identify issues
    b. Getting Shib and EZProxy working together

4) Determine how to help the staff who maintain the IdP to interact with 
vendors. What entitlements do they need?

5) Document and list pros/cons on delineating groups within EZProxy.
    a. This can be confusing/difficult to configure.
    b. You can configure a resource only once in EZProxy. Cases with 
multiple licenses with one vendor prohibits this approach.

It would be helpful to document how to deploy and configure an 
integrated Shibboleth/EZProxy system, identifying the choices sites 
would need to make. Some examples might include:

1) Document/diagram how you integrate Shibboleth and EZProxy
    a. There is more than one way
    b. Provide pros and cons for each method

2) Document/diagram the flow for a user browser session.

3) For both of these, include decision points and the decision that one 
or another of the systems is making at that point.

-----------
Other Issues

Federated Service Providers – There are about 100 information providers 
in the U.K. federation; the U.S. lags in getting vendors into InCommon. 
At Brown, for example, the librarians believe that getting the 15-20 
most-used external resources Shib-enabled would take 90-95 percent of 
the traffic off the proxy server. On customer surveys, users complain 
more about the proxy than everything else combined.

ARPs and Privacy Tags – Tim said that N.C. State is looking at ways to 
determine how to handle having users make decisions about which 
attributes third-party providers will receive. Brown is most of the way 
through a deployment of uApprove, which allows users to see which 
attributes are about to be released and to approve/disapprove. These 
processes will require education of the users as to the process, but 
also that disapproval will prevent access.

-----------
Next Steps

1) Create a wiki page for the documentation outlined above

2) Group members post any of their documentation relating to these areas.

3) Create a generic document describing Shibboleth/EZProxy integration 
and outlining the issues.