InCommon Library Services

[Dean Woodbeck <>]

InCommon Library Services Working Group
Draft Minutes
October 3, 2008
 
**Attending**
 
Holly Eggleston, University of California-San Diego (chair)
Steven Carmody, Brown University
Tom Barton, University of Chicago
Ann West, Internet2/EDUCAUSE
Dean Woodbeck, Internet2 (scribe)
 
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There was a general discussion about the future of the Library Services group and possible next steps.
 
Generally, the group has:

• discussed technologies that would be useful for federating library services, particularly the special use cases of walk-in patrons and remote access. There have been no recommendations or best practices developed.
• done some component testing, but not really functional testing. The University of Maryland did a pilot with EBSCO.

 
Suggestions for next steps:

• develop a summary of the group’s discussions/accomplishments, the value delivered by the federating approaches that have been discussed.
• look at options for associating this working group with a library-related organization
• open the working group to a wider audience
• reconstitute the working group with schools that have the resources and interest in conducting pilots. We need an early adopter group and some successful deploys to gain traction.
• determine how to start and foster this conversation among librarians.
• a number of schools have several federated applications operating with Shibboleth – invite them to the call. This would provide them with additional applications to consider.

 
There are a number of schools and organizations that might be right for piloting:

• the University of Chicago is moving forward. Applications in production (using Shibboleth and EZProxy) include RefWorks and Elsevier (Scopus and Science Direct).
• CIC, OhioLink, NJEdge
• NCMC (North Carolina) has a pilot starting – not library databases, but repositories with similar issues. Perhaps they could include a library resource?

 
Open questions

• How to disseminate information and to whom (white papers? wiki? others?)
• Identifying the right institutions and people for the next steps (both librarians and library IT people?) Tom will talk with the librarian at Chicago for advice on engaging the library community.
• Building the case for direct federated access to Shib-enabled resources, instead of SSO-enabled EZProxy and continued IP-based access for all resources.