InCommon Library Services

At 9:36 AM -0400 4/2/09, Timothy Mori wrote:
> Regarding the third action item, Top 10 Library vendors. These are 
> library services vendors, such as ILS providers (e.g. Sirsi-Dynix), 
> ILL services (ILLiad), Reference Linking (Serial Solutions, Ex 
> Libris), etc. correct? Since there seems a high level of EZProxy 
> use, I couldn't see how electronic resources vendors would apply in 
> this case.

I think the intent was to ask campuses to list their Top 10 external 
information providers/vendors (eg Science Direct, Web of Science, 
OCLC, etc). Which vendors would you MOST like to see Shib-enable 
their services?

Campus libraries often have hundreds of licenses in place. However, 
I'm told that a small number of these vendors (maybe 15) represents 
85+% of the actual traffic. It may take a long time to get to the 
point where every vendor that a campus deals with is shib-enabled. A 
short-term strategy might be to move the bulk of the traffic to 
shib-enabled sites. The librarians here at Brown tell me that they 
conduct a user satisfaction survey every other year. For the last 
several cycles, off-campus access to resources has been number one in 
the "what services do you have problems with" category. Making access 
easier and more seamless for 85+% of the traffic has the potential of 
knocking off-campus access from its number one ranking.... ;-)

My sense is that the starting point is the "user access to external 
resources" use case, which involves EZProxy, Shibboleth, and vendors. 
Over time, tho, I wouldn't be surprised if this group moves on to use 
cases involving all of those other categories of vendors.