Shibboleth Library Pilot
Shibboleth in Research Libraries: Penn State Experience
April 2007
Penn State University is one of four institutions participating in a recently initiated Internet2 pilot to consider how hurdles to use of Shibboleth in research libraries might be overcome. (The other institutions are the University of Chicago, University of California, San Diego, and the University System of Maryland Consortium of Libraries.)
Shib was first piloted at Penn State in Spring 2002 with a production Identity Provider established in October 2003. Penn State became a member of InCommon in May 2005. Currently, our Shibboleth Identity Provider and InCommon architecture provide access to a number of third party resource providers such as Napster, TurnItIn, Symplicity, and WebAssign. The institution is also in conversations with several other vendors such as Apple with regard to access to iTunes U.
The major obstacle to use of Shib in Penn State Libraries is that it is not a comprehensive solution; only a small percentage of vendors of licensed resources are Shib-enabled (including Elsevier, JSTOR and Ebsco) while hundreds are not, and the majority of these vendors continue to use IP filtering for access management. Thus, in addition to Shibboleth, University Libraries would need to support other authentication solutions for access to licensed resources. One issue that needs exploring is whether Shibboleth is therefore worth the implementation and support effort. In addition, we will be considering how vendors might be encouraged to become Shib-enabled and how research libraries might collectively work towards that goal through joint licensing agreements with consortia such as the CIC or through federations such as InCommon.
