Shibboleth Project

"Shibboleth is an initiative to develop an open, standards-based solution to the needs for organizations to exchange information about their users in a secure, and privacy-preserving manner. The initiative is facilitated by Internet2 and a group of leading campus middleware architects from member schools and corporate partners. The organizations that may want to exchange information include higher education, their partners, digital content providers, government agencies, etc. The purpose of the exchange is typically to determine if a person using a web browser (e.g., Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Mozilla) has the permissions to access a resource at a target resource based on information such as being a member of an institution or a particular class. The system is privacy preserving in that it leads with this information, not with an identity, and allows users to determine whether to release additional information about themselves. An open solution means both an open architecture and a functioning, open-source implementation. Standards-based means that the information that is exchanged between organizations can interoperate with that from other solutions. We are accepting contributions for further development." [via More Like This WebLog]

I'm posting this mostly to get it in my archives and on others' radar screens. It's a project that Clifford Lynch is tracking, which means it's worth tracking period. As Bill Humphries notes in his original post on MLTW, libraries are and should be interested in this project because it will improve our authorization abilities for databases and catalogs. I'll have to take some time to read through the site and figure out if there's a way to bring this into SLS (and ultimately all of the Illinois Library Systems), especially as we move forward with VIC (including patron-initiated interlibrary loan requests - someday!), LibraryU, and continued statewide access to FirstSearch.