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September-October 2002
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A Georgetown Shibboleth
Michael Neuman
In the Old Testament, "shibboleth" was a password used to prevent Ephraimites from intruding into the Gileadite camp. If a soldier pronounced "shibboleth" incorrectly, the Gileadites knew he was a member of the Ephraimite army and disposed of him immediately.
Today Shibboleth is an Internet2 middleware project designed to facilitate inter-institutional authentication and authorization. A Shibboleth system will allow authorized users easy access to resources while hackers, those modern-day Ephraimites, are cut off at the pass.
Internet 2 middleware is, according to their Web site, "a layer of software between the network and the applications. This software provides services such as identification, authentication, authorization, directories, and security." In other words, middleware takes the burden of user authentication and authorization off networks and applications, shifting the process to separate software. (A detailed discussion of the Shibboleth project can be found in the article "Shibboleth: Identity the Internet Way," available at http://middleware.internet2.edu/shibboleth/.)
Georgetown's Michael Gettes, Principal Technologist for University Information Services, has been working actively in the I2/EDUCAUSE-supported activities of MACE (the Middleware Architecture Committee for Education) and the I2 Middleware Initiative. As part of the Initiative, Michael is actively developing the Directory of Directories experiment and also working on the edu-Person and Shibboleth eduPerson and HEPKI projects.
Given Michael's involvement, it's appropriate that Georgetown University will be one of the initial sites for a Shibboleth pilot project sponsored by Internet2, the Coalition for Networked Information, and the Digital Library Federation. In an effort to simplify access to a variety of digital content resources, University Information Services, Lauinger Library, Dahlgren Library, and the Center for New Designs in Learning and Scholarship will collaborate on this pilot project with JesuitNet (the AJCU distance learning initiative), the Washington Research Library Consortium, and such major vendors of information resources as Elsevier and EBSCO.
If the project is successful and Shibboleth is implemented, Georgetown faculty members working from home and seeking an article from an Elsevier journal would be able to bypass Dahlgren Library's preliminary registration process or Lauinger Library's proxy server solution and be authorized directly by the publisher. Or students could conceivably follow links from their Blackboard course management system to resources made available by faculty at other universities participating in Shibboleth. Shibboleth might even enable the University and its MedStar partner to establish separate, secure networks while continuing desired levels of inter-institutional connectivity and communication.
Michael Neuman is Program Director for Library-IT Collaborations at University Information Services.
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