InCommon Library Services

["Eggleston, Holly" <>]

Hi all –

 

Just wanted to give you a heads up on the EZProxy meet and greet that took place on Sunday June 29, as well as the authentication meeting I had with Mark Allcock earlier that morning.

 

OCLC Authentication meeting:

 

I was the only one present at the morning feedback session – there was one additional person who was also interviewed (following the OCLC presentation later). We talked about the issues surrounding problems with access (both remote and local), I talked a lot about Shibboleth and different types of proxy. From this meeting and the presentation at the meet-and-greet, it sounds like OCLC is interested in creating some sort of centralized authentication functionality, particularly for smaller institutions. As well, they have mentioned integrating EZProxy authentication into the Netlibrary product – it was not entirely clear to me what was meant by this, as it would require users to already have EZProxy to use this feature.

 

 

OCLC EZProxy/Shibboleth Meet and Greet:

 

Don Hamparian and I each gave a quick presentation – I started out with a pared-down version of the regular Shib4Lib presentation, and he followed up with information about OCLC, a bit of background on the EZProxy transition and current features, as well as some of their future plans for authentication.

 

The Shibboleth presentation was well-received, but a bit less enthusiastically by the masses than at NASIG (although it did seem to help to clarify what Shibboleth was and how it could be useful for those that had minimal or no previous knowledge). That said, there was a lot of post-presentation interest from those institutions and groups that currently have both Shibboleth and EZproxy currently enabled.

 

Tom Ceresini, Member Services Coordinator at Palinet ( / 800.233.3401 x1204).  He is interested in getting a bit more information from his member institutions that are part of our pilot (Penn State and University of Maryland – I gave him the contact info for Lisa German and Laura Wrubel respectively). Per my earlier email with John, I told him that I would pass on his information to John re: consortia interest and implementations. (John, Lisa, Laura – FYI)

 

Beth Black, Systems Librarian, The Ohio State University ( / 614-688-5428). OSU has shib-enabled their EZProxy, and are also an Innovative shop, so are interested in UCSD’s progress with getting shibboleth working with III. I am also thinking they might be another good potential participant in the pilot, if we’re interested in expanding to include more active libraries. (Holly will follow up)

 

Peter Murray, Assistant Director of Library Systems - Multi-media Databases, OhioLINK ( / 614.728.3600 x 338). Peter is interested in possibly participating with the pilot project. From his notes: “OhioLINK is “shibbolizing” its internal services by creating a central IdP that uses the member’s patron database as a source of attributes.”  (Steve will be following up)

 

Mark Dehmlow, Electronic Services Librarian, Notre Dame University. We had a pretty extensive conversation regarding authentication and Shibboleth prior to the beginning of the presentation, but didn’t get a chance to continue the conversation – I’m going to follow up with him further as it sounds like they are pretty active in authentication, and have both EZProxy and Shibboleth implemented. (He was the other focus group participant interviewed by OCLC.) (Holly will follow up)

 

 

Other information:

 

I’d be interested in reports from other institutions piloting Refworks – I had a conversation with Anne Davis from the University of Washington (undergraduate librarian, and frequent user/instructor of Refworks, which UW currently has shib-enabled) about how use of shibboleth authentication has affected how the resource has historically been used and promoted on campus – specifically, the ability for users to create multiple accounts, such as a faculty member creating customized bibliographies for each of their different classes.

 

Jason Zavar () is the new PM of EZProxy.

 

Problems with EZProxy  - firewall conflicts seem to be pretty common. Notre Dame’s response:  this is usually a result of being in port mode, URL mode should avoid a lot of these conflicts.

 

Thanks!

 

Holly

 

Holly Eggleston

Assistant Department Head, Acquisitions

UC San Diego Libraries

858.534.9668

858.534.1256 (fax)

(personal)

(licensing and electronic resources)