InCommon Library Services

[Dean Woodbeck <>]

Draft Minutes
InC-Library Collaboration, Phase 2
May 15, 2009

**Attending**

Steve Carmody, Brown University (chair)
Adam Chandler, Cornell University
Paul Hill, MIT
Thomas Howell, Northwestern University
Andy Ingram, University of North Carolina
Dave Kennedy, Duke University
John Kiser, University of Pennsylvania
Jonathan Lavigne, Stanford University 
Tim Mori, North Carolina State University
Kent Percival, University of Guelph
Ernest Shaw, University of Missouri
Heather Townes White, University of Saskatchewan
Dean Woodbeck, Internet2 (scribe)

**NOTE: Important Changes**

The use case and walk-in subgroups have been combined.

The subgroups will meet weekly for the next three weeks. 

The vendor subgroup will keep the Friday, 1 p.m. (EDT) time and meet May 22, 
May 29, and June 5. 

Thomas Howell will poll the use case subgroup members, seeking a different 
day/time to meet (but it will meet weekly, starting next week)

**Action Items**

(AI) Steve Carmody will provide the vendor subgroup with contact information 
for those if the top 10 vendors that are members of the U.K. federation.

(AI) Steve Carmody will follow-up with OhioLink concerning an offer to share 
the code for using attributes to authenticate people in the III system.

(AI) Thomas Howell will poll use case subgroup members about a meeting 
day/time.

(AI) Steve Carmody will work with the U.K. federation to get a list of 
contacts at their content providers as a place to start with the NISO effort. 

**Vendor Subgroup Summary – May 1 Call**

Charge

1.      Develop a prioritized list of information providers (e.g. JSTOR, 
Science Direct, etc) that the group would like to have support 
Shibboleth-enabled access. 

2.      Determine which resources already support Shibboleth. 

3.      Identify the top priorities for making the business case to support 
Shib. Include information about which vendors are already associated with 
InCommon.  Use this information to create the beginnings of a registry of 
Shibboleth-enabled resources.

Goals

The group has identified three goals to complete in the coming few months:
1.      Prioritize a list of resources that will strengthen the use case for 
Shibboleth
2.      Document recommendations for resource providers
3.      Develop a registry of compliant resources, beginning with prioritized 
resources

Organization of Work

In order to meet these goals, the following tasks have been laid out:
•       Document a list of prioritized resources to target initially
•       Document recommendations for resource providers/criteria for 
compliance
•       Determine information to collect from resource providers and create 
registry framework (checklist)
•       Contact priority vendors, but first agree on common approach to doing 
this
•       Test resource providers for compliance

There was a suggestion to add, to the vendors listed on the wiki, the hosted 
ILLIAD service of both OCLC and Atlas.

In looking at resource providers that already support Shibboleth, the 
subgroup is looking at vendors that are already members of the U.K. 
federation. Seven of the 10 top vendors identified by the subgroup are in the 
U.K. federation. (AI) Steve Carmody will provide the subgroup with the 
contacts for those vendors. Kent Percival also has some contact information 
through his work with the Canadian federation.

**Use Case Subgroup Summary**

Thomas Howell and Ann West were the only participants in the use case 
subgroup call. Thomas continues work on information to standardize the use 
cases. If additional InC-Library participants are interested in the use case 
subgroup, please contact Thomas directly.

**Walk-in Subgroup Summary**

Those on the call went through the methods that two universities now handle 
walk-ins. The discussion also covered whether users with different types of 
affiliations can access various resources. Both of these universities, for 
example, have “friends of the library” groups with users listed in the 
library ILS system, but not in the campus identity management system. There 
are different access restrictions on these affiliates, vs. faculty and staff, 
vs. walk-in users. The subgroup will post notes to the wiki and will move 
toward developing a set of generic use cases.

There was further discussion about friends of the library groups and the 
range of access such users are provided. There are several campuses where any 
walk-in user, physically located in the library, has access to all resources. 
Friends of the library members, however, do not have such access just based 
on that credential. Generally, libraries that also serve as federal document 
repositories must offer full access to walk-ins. 

**eduRoam**

Canada has recently deployed eduRoam throughout the country, which allows 
campus visitors to use their home credentials to accomplish a federated login 
to wireless networks on campuses. One key question is whether licenses allow 
those accessing the network via eduRoam to gain access to protected 
resources. Steven Carmody reported that a U.S. campus may soon be taking the 
lead on deploying eduRoam in the U.S.

Paul Hill reported that librarians at MIT would say that eduRoam users should 
have access privileges based on their home institution’s licenses. MIT 
librarians have reached the conclusion that IP access control is no longer 
viable.

Steven mentioned that OhioLink, with 80+ campuses, are using attributes to 
authenticate people in the III systems and has offered to make their code 
available. (AI) Steven will pursue that offer.

**Effectiveness of Subgroup Approach**

There was general agreement that the subgroup approach should prove to be 
effective to make quick progress on a range of problems. The vendor group 
seems to have already achieved critical mass. The other two groups need to 
generate momentum and it was suggested that they be combined, given that some 
of their work overlaps. It was agreed that the use case and walk-in subgroups 
will be combined.

There was discussion as to the timing and frequency of calls, as well as 
whether the subgroups should meet during several of the next call times. The 
group agreed that the subgroups will meet for the next three weeks in a row, 
with the full group next meeting on June 12. 

The vendor subgroup will meet on the next three Fridays at 1 p.m. (May 22, 
May 29, and June 5). The use case subgroup will meet for the next three 
weeks, but will explore a different day and time for those meetings. (AI) 
Thomas Howell will poll subgroup members about a meeting time.

**NISO Update**

Adam Chandler provided an update on the NISO project to standardize the user 
experience with vendors. The group is in the process of setting up its 
membership and has a list of about 25 people who have volunteered or are 
targeted for recruitment. Adam has a concern that only three content 
providers are represented and is pushing to recruit more, since they will 
need to act on the recommendations. (AI) Steve will work with the U.K. 
federation to get a list of contacts at their content providers as a place to 
start with the NISO effort. 

Steve also reported that JISC has awarded Cardiff University a contract to 
study the user experience when using federated access to services, with an 
eye to improving the experience and making it more consistent across provider 
sites. Rhys Smith from Cardiff will lead the survey. The JISC contact is Mark 
Williams.

**Chat Summary**

There was discussion in the chat room about these topics:

EZproxy and Illiad -- will this combination be well covered by a subgroup? It 
was suggested that, for this topic and others, for InC-Library members to 
make sure the use cases cover their situations.

EZProxy and Resources: What the average number of resources other 
universities are exposing via their EZProxy instance?

MIT -- I think we serve something like 350 data resources via EZproxy.  
Missouri -- We have 1219 resource title entries in our config.

UPenn -- A quick and dirty grep of our ezproxy.cfg shows we're proxying well 
over 800 resources

**Next Call: Vendor Subgroup, Friday, May 22, 1:00 p.m. EDT**
**Next Call: Use Case Subgroup, TBA
**Next Full InC-Library Meeting, Friday, June 12, 1:00 p.m. EDT**