InCommon Library Services

[Dean Woodbeck <>]

Please send comments/corrections to

--Dean

InCommon Library Services Working Group
Draft Minutes
March 21, 2008

**Attending**

Holly Eggleston, University of California-San Diego (acting chair)
Tom Barton, University of Chicago
Declan Fleming, University of California-San Diego
R.L. “Bob” Morgan, University of Washington
Ann West, EDUCAUSE/Internet2
Dean Woodbeck, Internet2 (scribe)

**Announcements/Follow-up**

Steven Carmody is contacting Alan Darnell (U of Guelph), who is interested in joining these calls. Alan is part of a group exploring a federation in Canada.

Steven also has a call scheduled with Don Hamparian, project manager for OCLC to discuss any ramifications concerning the acquisition of EZProxy. Steven will summarize the call to the email list or on a future call.

Bob Morgan announced that Shibboleth 2.0 was released March 19. This version has had a lot of testing. One common question is whether the new release will work within InCommon. The short answer is that Shib 2.0 will work, but only in its SAML 1.2 protocol mode. Shib 2.0 should be compatible with Shib 1.3 in both directions. InCommon support for the SAML 2.0 protocol is coming within the next two or three months.

Of interest in the InCommon student services space, there will be a joint meeting in July sponsored by AACRAO (registrars and admissions officers), EDUCAUSE and Internet2 concerning identity management.

Holly mentioned a presentation she saw at the ALA midwinter meeting. NISO is Apparently effort via NISO (National Information Standards Organization) concerning institutional identity management. The slide deck is here (go to the bottom – it is the last presentation on the list):

http://www.niso.org/news/events_workshops/alamid08/index.html.

**Best Practices**

The working group discussed progress to date, what deliverables might be appropriate, and whether it is time to begin documenting any best practices. In general, the working group reiterated the original charge – to explore issues and document best practices in libraries – and that needs to include an outreach component. This will be discussed again on the next call, after the results of the “status of campus pilot projects” email are compiled. This might lead to some calls for white papers or use cases.

The ideas that came out of the brainstorming included:

·       Discussing creation of creating public space on the wiki

·       Creating a wiki page with vendor contact information

·       Link to Service Provider Shib log-in pages

·       Provide information on how to federate with a vendor/service provider

·       Provide information, from the library perspective, on how to talk with central IT about Shibboleth and federating.

·       For those who aren’t Shib-enabled, how to talk to central IT about implementation. Provide a list of benefits, outside of the library, why a Shib-enabled campus is good.

·       Provide information about the EDUCAUSE identity management email list.

·       Identify institutions that already have a substantial amount of the infrastructure in place. For example, InCommon participants that have Shib-enabled and run EZProxy. Provide a forum for them to talk about their experiences.

    ·       Query InCommon participants about any Shibbolized services that they may have available for use by others.

**InCommon**

There was a general conversation about InCommon – the cost of joining and the necessary participation agreements.

**VPNs**

Declan Fleming mentioned that UCSD is looking at a Cisco VPN product to facilitate remote access. He would like to hear from others with any experience. Users go to a web page and log in, then move to a captive page. Another mode uses a java product, where everything a user does is through the VPN, which remains active even if the user closes the browser.

**Next call – Friday, April 4, 1:00 p.m. (EST)**