News from the ‘misty’ Albion: Shibboleth in the UK

1. News from the ‘misty’ Albion: Shibboleth in the UK Masha Garibyan London School of Economics Library, England (With grateful acknowledgement to Terry Morrow, JISC) Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

2. Total area – ‘slightly smaller’ than Oregon Why the United Kingdom? Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

3. UK Activity • UK development work funded by JISC • Joint Information Systems Committee • Government funded body – multimillion £ budget • Supports IT in UK post-16 education & research • Works with international partners eg • Internet2 • Terena (Trans-European Research & Education Networking Association) • International Middleware Meeting, Upper Slaughter (England), Oct 2004, JISC-sponsored Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

4. JISC • Funding two major middleware initiatives • 3-year technology development programme • 2-year infrastructure programme Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

5. Technology Development • 3 years (2004 – 2007) • $5.7m (£3m) of government funding • Funding 15 projects • Wide range of middleware activities: • Development and evaluation of tools • Institutional deployment • Use of tools and policies • Builds on earlier work also funded by JISC Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

6. Infrastructure Programme • 2 years (2004 – 2006) • $6m (£3.2m) of government funding • Establishing a UK Shibboleth infrastructure • Key work areas: • Making national data centre services Shibboleth compliant • Funding for 16 universities willing to be early Shibboleth adopters • Creating a dedicated support service for ‘early adopters’ • Liaising with suppliers (publishers, subscription agents etc) • Establishing a national UK Shib federation Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

7. Middleware Assisted Take-Up Service (MATU) • Providing support to the JISC-funded early adopters • Scoping future requirements for institutions adopting Shibboleth • Support services include: • Comprehensive website • Documentation • Help desk • Onsite support • Training events • Links to and information about Shibboleth Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

8. 180 universities 500 FE colleges So, in the future it might look like this… Not bad for a country that is ‘slightly’ smaller than Oregon  Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

9. London School of Economics (LSE) Library Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

10. LSE Library • Part of the London School of Economics & Political Science • Also known as the British Library of Political and Economic Science • The largest library in the world devoted exclusively to the social sciences • 11,000 registered external visitors (e.g. Bill Clinton) and (rich) alumni Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

11. LSE Library projects • Active participation in cutting edge information technology developments through internally and externally-funded projects (e.g. JISC) • A track record of successful projects in access management (and other areas) • LSE was the first institution in the UK to pilot the Shibboleth technology Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

12. PERSEUS Project • Portal-enabled Resources via Shibbolized End-user Security (PERSEUS) Project • Part of the JISC Core Middleware: Technology Development Programme • PERSEUS aims to: • provide Shibboleth-based access management to information resources via an institutional portal (moving away from identity-based solutions) • use LSE as a UK test bed for Shibboleth • while being actively involved in other projects… Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

13. DART Project • Digital Anthropology Resources for Teaching (DART) Project: • a collaboration between LSE and Columbia University, jointly funded by JISC and the US National Science Foundation (2003 – 2008) • DART aims to: • develop digital teaching resources for undergraduate anthropology • investigate opportunities for flexible resource-sharing between universities (using Shib) Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

14. PERSEUS/ DART connection • PERSEUS Team (with colleagues from Columbia) helped DART to facilitate Shibboleth-based resource-sharing between the two institutions • So, • No resource duplication • Institutional IPR protection • First ever use of Shibboleth to share teaching and library resources across continents Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

15. It works like this… • Columbia University has developed a digital resource in Anthropology which it is sharing with LSE • An LSE user uses one of these routes to access the resource: • WebCT (LSE’s VLE) • Columbia University website Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

16. User is redirected to WAYF Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

17. User selects home institution Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

18. Request is processed Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

19. Success! Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

20. ShibboLEAP • JISC Infrastructure Programme: Early Adopters • Consortium of 6 London HE colleges, led by LSE • LEAP = London E-prints Access Project • Aims to create an authentication service for staff involved in managing content (e.g. academics, librarians) that doesn’t require use of a (yet another) username/password ‘supplied’ by Eprints.org server • Create a Shib IdP service at each college • Integrate the Eprints.org server making it a Shib target Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

21. So what’s next? • Shib can be used in many different ways • JISC has recently announced its plans to adopt Shibboleth as the main standards-based architecture for access management in the communities it serves. • So, watch the space! Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

22. Some links • www.jisc.ac.uk/programme_middleware.html • www.angel.ac.uk/PERSEUS/ • www.columbia.edu/dlc/dart/ • www.angel.ac.uk/ShibboLEAP/ • www.matu.ac.uk Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting

23. Contact details • M.Garibyan@lse.ac.uk • +44 (0)20 7852 3509 • www.angel.ac.uk/PERSEUS Any questions? Spring 2005 Internet2 Member meeting