Middleware Announcements

[Renee Frost <>]

> Call For Participation:
> Using Shibboleth to Improve Collaboration and Management of Content Access
>
> This is an invitation to a modest number of universities to participate in 
> a pilot to explore the use of Shibboleth in a variety of academic 
> settings. Shibboleth is an initiative by Internet2 member universities to 
> develop and deploy new middleware technologies that can facilitate 
> inter-institutional collaboration and access to digital content. It 
> supports a new model for access management control that is designed to be 
> both scalable and easily administered for both campuses and content 
> providers. More information on Shibboleth can be found on the Internet2 
> middleware web site (http://middleware.internet2.edu/shibboleth).
>
> 1.  Goals for the pilot phase include:
> a)..Work with the Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), the  Digital 
> Library Foundation (DLF) and digital library resource providers to 
> evaluate the use of Shibboleth in enhancing management of content access. 
> Five major academic service providers, including EBSCO, Elsevier, and SFX, 
> are interested in evaluating the use of Shibboleth and will install target 
> services to support the pilot.  RLG and OCLC will be investigating the 
> installation of target services to support the pilot. Together the service 
> providers share a number of similar access control requirements, though 
> each provider has some specific functionalities (such as role-based 
> cataloging) with their customers that they would like to exercise in the 
> pilot. The DLF has endorsed Shibboleth as a standard in which the DLF has 
> significant interest. CNI views Shibboleth as an extremely important and 
> promising emerging technology to meet some critical needs within the 
> research and education community.
>
> b)..Facilitate sharing of instructional materials between 
> institutions.  Classes often want to share instructional web site 
> materials on a restricted basis (e.g. class notes, preprints, copyrighted 
> materials, etc.) and find current mechanisms cumbersome and a barrier.
>
> c)..Develop approaches to multi-institutional services and processes. Many 
> research groups draw members from  multiple institutions. Many 
> universities have research data centers that aggregate and disseminate 
> information from other institutions, whether administrative (sharing of 
> budget information) or academic (retention information, transcripts, etc).
>
>
> 2.  Participants in the pilot must have the following capabilities:
> a)..Meet the technical requirements (see Section 5. below)
>
> b)..Be willing to install and manage Shibboleth alpha-code.
>
> c)..Be willing to help shape, and then implement, policies required to 
> permit the exchange of information about members of university communities.
>
> d)....Campuses may deploy either origin services (i.e. campus members 
> gaining access to external resources) or target services (i.e. allowing 
> external users to gain access to campus-based resources). We are most 
> interested in sites intending to operate in both roles.
>
>
> 3.  Timeframes and resource commitments: It is anticipated that the pilot 
> will begin July 26, 2002, with alpha-code being made available to sites 
> when selected. The pilot will be active throughout the summer, with 
> release of the Shibboleth v1.0 code scheduled for the end of September, 
> 2002.  If the pilot services prove of value, it is likely that the service 
> models developed will emerge as a production service.
>
>
> 4.  Selection criteria: University participants will be selected by three 
> criteria:
> a)..Participants will need to meet the requirements of the testbed 
> specified in Section 2 above. (Please refer to Section 5 for further detail.)
>
> b)..Participants will be selected partially on the basis of presenting a 
> diversity of technical and organizational environments in which to refine 
> Shibboleth policies and tools.
>
> c)..The number of interactions that may be served with Shibboleth among 
> the participants with the content providers and each other.
>
>
> 5.  Technical Requirements:
> a.  Technical Requirements for Resource Providers
>      Solaris (2.6 or 2.8) or Linux platform
>      Apache Web Server 1.3.x with dynamic loadable module support 
> (mod_so) and compiled with EAPI turned on
>      Java JDK 1.3
>      Tomcat 3.3
>      OpenSSL
>      Will need to provide a certificate corresponding to the signing 
> key  provided to Shibboleth
>
> b.  Technical Requirements for Origin Sites
>      Solaris (2.6 or 2.8) or Linux Platform
>      Apache Web Server 1.3.x with dynamic loadable module support 
> (mod_so) and compiled with EAPI turned on
>      Java JDK  1.3
>      Tomcat 3.3
>      OpenSSL
>      An enterprise authentication system, connected to web server 
> authentication
>      An enterprise directory, preferably ldap based, supporting eduPerson 
> 1.0 or 1.5
>      (optional) MySQL
>      Will need to provide a certificate corresponding to the signing 
> key  provided to Shibboleth
>
> Interested institutions are asked to submit brief letters of interest to 
> George Brett () or Renee Frost () by 
> July 12. Letters should include a short description of the campus 
> authentication and web service authorization  environment, identification 
> of technical and management project leads, a description of the 
> institutional involvement with the set of content providers in Section 1.a 
> above, as well any other projects where you intend to evaluate the 
> application of Shibboleth, both inter and intra campus.

Attachment: shibboleth-cfp1.doc
Description: MS-Word document