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Re: [InC-Lib-Vendor] InC-Library Best Practices question


Chronological Thread 
  • From: Mark Montague <>
  • To: David Kennedy <>
  • Cc: , ,
  • Subject: Re: [InC-Lib-Vendor] InC-Library Best Practices question
  • Date: Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:04:55 -0500


Hi, David,

Sorry for the delay in getting back with you -- we've checked with everyone here and either February 5th or February 12th at 1pm ET would work great for us. (We could also probably do January 22nd if that day becomes better for you). Please let us know how you would like to proceed.

Thanks again for your help on this!

Mark Montague
ITS Web/Database Team
The University of Michigan




On December 22, 2009 10:15 , David Kennedy <> wrote:
We have calls on Jan 22nd, Feb 5th, and Feb 12th, calls scheduled for 1PM
ET. My preference is either of the February dates. Let me know if any of
these dates work for you.

Dave

-----
David Kennedy
Application Developer
Perkins Library, Duke University
(919) 613-6831




From:
Mark Montague<>
To:
David Kennedy<>
Cc:
,
Date:
12/22/2009 10:01 AM
Subject:
Re: [InC-Lib-Vendor] InC-Library Best Practices question




Hi, David,

That would be great; we'd very much like that. Let us know the day and
time of the call and we'll let you know who we'll have call in -- it may
not be me, as I'm a pointy-haired manager type. The most likely
candidates would be our technical lead for Shibboleth, plus possibly
someone from our library's IT department.

Thanks for your help on this!


Mark Montague
ITS Web/Database Team




On December 22, 2009 09:54 , David Kennedy<> wrote:
Hi Mark,

We discussed your email in our last conference call. We would like to
help. Over the last few months, we have had dialog with a lot of the
vendors regarding Shibboleth, their implementations, and best practices.
We are thinking that it would be a good idea to invite a number of
vendors
into a discussion on the topic, because we don't think there is an
obvious
solution that is "best". Since many of these vendors have long change
management cycles, we'd like to invite them into the process early.

Would you be willing to join one of our calls in the next month or two
to
discuss with us?

Thanks
Dave

-----
David Kennedy
Application Developer
Perkins Library, Duke University
(919) 613-6831




From:
Mark Montague<>
To:

Cc:
shibboleth<>, ""
<>
Date:
12/15/2009 03:24 PM
Subject:
[InC-Lib-Vendor] InC-Library Best Practices question




Dear members of the InCommon Library Collaboration Vendor Subgroup,

First, thank you for drafting the Best Practices document for library
resource providers and libraries; we have found it very helpful.

We also have a question that we'd like your opinion on, and, if you feel
it to be appropriate, to add to the Best Practices document:

When a single institution has multiple campuses, each with a different
license from a single library resource provider, but where each campus
shares a single IdP, user directory, and authentication infrastructure,
what is the best practice for the IdP communicating a user's campus
affiliation with the library resource provider? Note that a single
individual may be affiliated with multiple campuses.


We've asked this question on the mailing
list and included additional background information:


https://mail.internet2.edu/wws/arc/shibboleth-users/2009-11/msg00003.html

For a complete threaded list of replies, see "multi-campus IdPs /
identifying campus/branch to an SP" at

https://mail.internet2.edu/wws/arc/shibboleth-users/2009-11/thrd1.html


The reason we're addressing this question to you is because in his first
reply to us, Scott Cantor says:


The "organizational ID" problem is coming up
repeatedly in a lot of use cases, but there's no consensus.

We hope you can recommend a best practice in this area.


Options that we can easily accommodate include any of the following:

- asserting entitlements, in addition to common-lib-terms, to represent
which campus license(s) should apply.

- providing eduPersonScopedAffiliation to indicate campus affiliation.

- providing the "locality" attribute from the eduOrg schema to indicate
campus affiliation.

- providing a special attribute specific to the University of Michigan
to indicate campus affiliation, e.g., "umichCampus" (although this is
obviously a poor choice for a solution).



Options that are not good for us include:

- setting up a separate IdP for each campus (this is very expensive, and
would also be confusing to users who were affiliated with more than one
campus; and it does not make sense as all campuses share common
directory and authentication infrastructures).

- providing the "ou" (organizational unit) attribute from our directory;
our "ou"s are based on department affiliation and role, and are not, in
general, reliable indicators of campus affiliation. And restructuring
all of our directory "ou"s for a resource provider is not feasible.



The library resource provider in question can only support multiple IdPs
or the "ou" attribute at the current time. They are very reluctant to
change any of their code, but they say:


we'd prefer any development work we do to be to an
agreed standard, rather than implement anything one-off.

We're hoping that, with clarification from you, we can present the
library resource provider with a compelling case for modifying their
code to support one of the options in the first list, above.

Thanks in advance for any guidance or assistance you can provide.

Mark Montague
ITS Web/Database Team
The University of Michigan



















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