InCommon Library Services

[Andy Ingham <>]

Dave --

How interesting.

Back in September '09 I exchanged email with Christopher Phillippe of 
SerialsSolutions about support for WAYFless URLs in SS's A-Z list (also 
called "360 Core") which is essentially a HOSTED list of an 
institution's e-journal offerings.

The official word at that time (and I've not heard anything from them 
since) was that they "currently do not support WAYFless URLs for 
Shibboleth, but it is something our product managers are keeping an eye 
on. I will pass on your message that you are interested in working with 
us if we want to pursue this at some point in the future."

See below for the text of my message to begin the thread with them back 
in September.

Andy

Andy Ingham
Assistant Head, Library Systems
University Library
UNC-Chapel Hill
919-962-1288



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At UNC-CH, we are gaining momentum behind Shibboleth. We've enabled it 
for EZproxy already and will soon begin implementing for individual 
e-resources. To get around the "discovery problem" (see 
http://sites.google.com/site/publisherinterfacestudy/home/the-discovery-problem 
), we feel we need to provide WAYFless options wherever possible. (See 
https://gabriel.lse.ac.uk/twiki/bin/view/Projects/WayfLess for info on 
WAYFless access).

Since the activation of Shibboleth with e-resources will be INCREMENTAL 
and take a long time, we believe (and think others will agree) that 
there is a need to offer users TWO links to resources: (1) through our 
EZproxy (via a "proxy prefix") AND (2) via Shibboleth (with a URL that 
contains data that allows WAYFless access).

So...

I know that SerialsSolutions can *PREPEND* URLs with a proxy prefix that 
the institution supplies. Are there any plans to enable institutions to 
provide information (such as SSO_LOCATION of their IdP) so that you 
could also dynamically build *WAYFless URLs* to resources? I would 
envision this as simply another configuration data element available to 
institutions in the Client Center.

To complete the circle, the A-Z list could then be set up to provide 
links in EITHER or BOTH of the two ways described above. (This would 
require very fine control over which links appear for which resources).

Sorry to be long winded, but this is an important issue for us moving 
forward. And I'd love to continue a dialogue about it; my contact info 
is below.
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David Kennedy wrote:
> Serials Solutions has Shibboleth support in some of its products, 
> including 360 Link and 360 Search, but have not yet worked with any 
> InCommon member sites.  They contacted me to see if there are any 
> InCommon institutions interested in using Shibboleth for access to their 
> products.
>  
> If you are interested, please let me know.
>  
> Thanks
> Dave
>  
> -----
> David Kennedy
> Perkins Library, Duke University
> (919) 613-6831
>  <>