Shibboleth Developers

[Peter Murray <>]

And if you'll allow one more message, a couple of other thoughts about 
the SHARPE mockup:  one (hopefully relatively) simple and one more 
thought-provoking.

One of the key pieces for this for library (or, eventually, end user) 
to specify the unique-yet-not-identifiable attribute back to the 
resource provider for the purpose of offering a customized environment 
in an anonymous setting.  I expect it may be one of the attributes that 
can be added to the policy (the pull-down list on 
<http://www.stanford.edu/~jvine/shibboleth/mockups/7/custom.html>), but 
I wanted to be sure it was accounted for, maybe even in a explicit way 
before sending the mockup out to the focus group.

The second is very likely out of scope for current development, but 
something you may want to be aware of.  One of the hot new topics in 
library automation now is the creation of "Electronic Resource 
Management" tools.  The Digital Library Federation created the 
Electronic Resource Management Initiative to:

   develop common specifications and tools for managing the license
   agreements, related administrative information, and internal
   processes associated with collections of licensed electronic
   resources.
   <http://www.diglib.org/standards/dlf-erm02.htm>

One piece of this is the data relative to the usage agreements for 
resources (part of what the Shib Architecture document calls "an 
institutional ARP, reflecting...out-of-band agreements and contracts 
between institutions of higher education and commercial information 
providers."  The (rather expansive) information about this can be found 
at the Web Hub for Developing Administrative Metadata for
Electronic Resource Management 
(<http://www.library.cornell.edu/cts/elicensestudy/>), although the 
pieces key to the authN/authZ components are buried in the XML Schema.

The reason for bringing all of this up, though, is there will likely be 
a need for an automated way to move information from an Electronic 
Resource Management tool in the libraries to the ARP.  We're fortunate, 
in that the Digital Library Federation has gotten out in front and 
defined the Schema and E-R diagrams that most commercial library 
automation vendors will use to create their service, so it should be 
possible to provide a somewhat generic tool to do this.

This may be a library-specific problem, so we may have to solve it 
ourselves, but there may be other cases were such a tool is needed. 
(What immediately comes to mind is course packs from publishers for 
Course Management Systems.)


One further aside, my introduction message should also have included 
the fact that I work in libraries, but I have a degree and background 
in systems analysis, so this junction between library needs/functions 
and the application of technology is a high interest of mine.  I am 
also in a role at the University of Connecticut that can help be the 
bridge between these communities and get some work done besides that 
benefits both.


Peter
--
Peter Murray                      http://www.pandc.org/peter/work/
Assistant to the Director for Technology Initiatives  860-486-6771
University of Connecticut Libraries            Storrs, Connecticut