Defining Use Cases for Federating Library Services

here's a rough draft of what I've got so far....


Jane is sitting at Starbucks following her Bio 301 class; she's 
reviewing the work she'll need to do before the next class meeting.

She goes to the campus LMS system, logs in with her University web 
single sign-on userid and password, and starts viewing the course 
information.

There are three articles she has to read -- she clicks the link for 
each one, and is taken directly to articles at Elsevier, EBSCO, and 
JSTOR. She doesn't have to identify herself because all three sites 
operate within the same Web SSO framework that is used on the campus. 
All three links are "deep links" -- they take her directly to an 
article deep in the site, rather than to the site's front page (where 
she'd then have to search for the desired article).

She decides that she'll also search for additional articles on the 
same topic. She goes to MedLine (an abstracts DB), and starts 
searching. She finds an interesting article, and clicks the OpenURL 
button. She is redirected to the Link Resolver at her campus, and on 
to the deep link at "Biochemistry and cell biology"; once again, she 
doesn't have to identify herself.

She also decides to search the local campus library catalog for 
relevant books. She finds one -- but when she logs in to the local 
ILS system she discovers that one of her classmates has already 
checked the book out. She clicks a button, tho, and is taken to Iliad 
(the inter-library loan system). Once again, she doesn't have to 
identify herself. She orders the book from another campus library.

Lastly, she goes to XXXX site. Once again, she doesn't have to 
identify herself. This site is able to use the persistent but 
anonymous identifier sent by her campus to uniquely identify her. The 
site doesn't know her real identity, but recognizes that "its her" 
whenever she returns. She's able to save searches from one session to 
the next, and create a personalized look to the site. If she were 
willing to share her email address, the site would send her a 
monthly email newsletter (with content tailored to her searches).