Off-campus Access to Licensed Online Resources through Shibboleth

Francis Jayakanth; Anand Byrappa; Raja Visvanathan

doi:10.6017/ital.v40i2.12589

Authors

Dr. Francis Jayakanth Indian Institute of Science
Dr. Anand T. Byrappa Indian Institute of Science
Mr. Raja Visvanathan INFLIBNET Centre, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6017/ital.v40i2.12589

Abstract

Institutions of advanced education and research, through their libraries, invest substantially in licensed online resources. Only authorized users of an institution are entitled to access licensed online resources. Seamless on-campus access to licensed resources happens mostly through Internet Protocol (IP) address authentication. Increasingly, licensed online resources are accessed by authorized users from off-campus locations as well. Libraries will, therefore, need to ensure seamless off-campus access to authorized users. Libraries have been using various technologies, including proxy server or virtual private network (VPN) server or single sign-on, to facilitate seamless off-campus access to licensed resources. In this paper, authors share their experience in setting up a Shibboleth-based single sign-on (SSO) access management system at the JRD Tata Memorial Library, Indian Institute of Science, to enable authorized users of the institute to seamlessly access licensed online resources from off-campus locations.

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