Shibboleth at LSE

LSE Library

Testing the Shibboleth and Athens-Gateway URLs

Most Athens-enabled resources are already Gateway-compliant but before the Library can provide Shibboleth access to those resources, the new access method must be thoroughly tested. There are also some LSE resources (and the number is constantly growing) that are directly Shibboleth-compliant and do not require the use of the Gateway. The Library has created a dedicated Shibboleth test folder in the Electronic Library to provide real-world testing of resources via Shibboleth.

The test procedures and findings are made available on this website and volunteer Library and IT staff, plus a few students are alerted of a new round to test and report.

The test results are analysed and used to update this Table of the status of the Shibboleth and Gateway-compliant e-resources in the LSE's Electronic Library.

Round 4 test (January 2007)

The Library is currently conducting Round 4 tests and the results will be available on this website shortly.

Some background information:

Shibboleth

JISC is switching the authentication system for the UK academic world from the Athens system currently in use to the Shibboleth system in 2008. The testing of Shibboleth access from the LSE Library's Electronic Library is part of the work of the PERSEUS Project at LSE Library Projects. The results so far are recorded here. Your work will help update this table, which will be of interest to the later adopters of Shibboleth. LSE was one of the earliest adopters. Elsevier have started to directly Shibbolize their services, starting with ScienceDirect. Ovid / SilverPlatter are planning to do so, but with no date scheduled yet.

Athens Gateway

As service providers (publishers, aggregators, etc.) are proving slow to directly Shibbolize their services, and may not all have done so by the deadline in 2008, JISC is funding Eduserv provide an interim Gateway whereby Shibboleth requests for access to a resource are resolved into an Athens authentication for that resource, provided that resource is Gateway compliant.

Classic Athens

Some resources are not Gateway compliant and can only be accessed via 'Classic Athens' (i.e. as Athens was before the Shibboleth component was introduced into the Gateway). During the first LSE Library trials of the Athens Gateway it was discovered that, under certain circumstances, as replicated in the Cookies Issue test, the Classic Athens access ceased to work properly. Eduserv came up with a solution to the cookies problem and one of the strands of this test checks that this is still working.