Shibboleth Technology and the
IAMSECT Project

Summary

Our first dissemination event was a full day of interactive presentations, covering the very basics of what Shibboleth is and why it may be useful to us. Two members of the IAMSECT project, Caleb Racey and Jon Dowland (ISS, University of Newcastle) presented to an audience composed primarily of librarians, followed by guest presentations by JISC consultant Terry Morrow and PERSEUS project officer Masha Garibyan.

Overview

The day was opened with a speech by Paul Hopkins (Directory of ISS, University of Newcastle) in which every participant was asked about their background and what they wanted to take away with them at the end of the day.

The morning session consisted of back-to-back presentations by Caleb Racey and Jon Dowland of ISS, University of Newcastle. The history of online resource provision, the current solutions in use and their drawbacks were covered as groundwork before Shibboleth, federations and attributes were introduced as a potential solution to the problems identified. These slides are part of the set of main slides available below.

The afternoon session started with a recap of the Shibboleth material which was covered just before lunch, leading into a description of the IAMSECT project and the key problem areas that we are focusing on.

After this, the guest speakers then took the floor: Firstly Terry Morrow gave apologies for Ann Borda who was unfortunately unwell. He then outlined JISC's Core middleware strategy including an overview of the various funding strands involving shibboleth and projects within these strands. Finally Masha Garibyan from the LSE-led PERSEUS project discussed their attempts to rein in a variety of different services provided with different access restrictions and policies. Both sets of slides are available below.

Slides from the day

Cal Racey, Jon Dowland: Main slides

powerpoint (4.4M), PDF (1.3M). These works are licensed under a Creative Commons License.

Ann Borda / Terry Morrow: Connecting People to Resources: JISC Core Middleware Programme

powerpoint (726K), PDF (328K).

Masha Garibyan: Access to library resources: Case study

powerpoint (247K), PDF (156K).