Shibboleth and library portals

Shibboleth is a federated system of authentication and authorization that can address many of these issues. When institutions and vendors join together in a Shibboleth federation, the library gateway no longer needs to mediate the authentication interaction between library users and resources, and it can use attributes available through Shibboleth to offer an improved set of services tailored to the patron. It may also provide a means to resolve some of the issues that arise when resource access does not fit neatly into Shibboleth’s origin-target model. But to take advantage of the Shibboleth trust infrastructure the portal must be “Shibboleth-enabled” to interoperate with the Shibboleth software. This note explores what it means for a library portal to be Shibboleth-enabled by presenting some scenarios illustrating the roles the portal might play in a Shibboleth federation. [Library Portal Roles in a Shibboleth Federation]