Introduction
A series of interviews were carried out to library decision makers in order to get insight on their current AAI setting and their level of adoption of federated access solutions. The main objective was to identify their training needs on federated access and the technical implementation of AAI technologies.
This work has been done as part of NA2 activities, led by LIBER officers with the contribution of many WP participants that participated in the interviews design, conduction and reporting.
A total of nine interviews were carried out during December 2015 and January 2016 (see table 1) allowing to gather detailed and very valuable information about the situations, perspectives, approaches and opinions from different kinds of research libraries and libraries organization representing several countries.
Table 1. List of interviews contacts, roles, institution and country
Interview nr. | Contact name | Role | Institution | Country |
1 | Adoté Chilloh | Resp. Operational IT Security | Bibliothèque Nationale de France (BNF) | France |
2 | Mark Williams | JISC federator manager | JISC / UK Access Management Federation | United Kingdom |
3 | Emīls Klotiņš | Head of Library IT Department | National Library of Latvia (NLL) | Latvia |
| 4 | Gaspar Olmedo | Technical coordinator, Library | CSIC Libraries Network | Spain |
4 | Inmaculada Ramos | PAPI service and access to electronic resources | CSIC Libraries Network | Spain |
5 | Giannis Tsakonas | Head of Library | Patras University Library | Greece |
6 | Bjarne Andersen | Head of Library IT Department | Aarhus State and University Library | Denmark |
7 | Teresa Malo de Molina | Head of Library | University Carlos III of Madrid Library | Spain |
8 | Lluís Anglada | Head of Library and Information Department | CBUC/CSUC | Spain |
8 | Ramon Ros | Head of IT Department | CBUC/CSUC | Spain |
9 | Jeannette Frey | Library Director | Bibliothèque Cantonale et Universitaire de Laussane (BCUL) | Switzerland |
Conclusions
Some conclusions can be drawn from the preliminary analysis of the interviews, such as the following:
♦ There is an heterogeneous situation of libraries in the European context in regards to authentication and authorization implementation, with clear differences among countries and regions.
♦ The type of libraries and the kind of services and resources they offer through secure-access is diverse (some act both as IdP and as SP), but the biggest challenge is posed by electronic resources collections subscribed from external providers.
♦ Technical implementation of federated authentication systems is a real challenge for libraries, that consider it to be too complex for them in comparison with IP-based authentication systems.
♦ IP-based authentication is still the preferred authentication method for many libraries, due to the technical complexity of other solutions but also to the lack of offer from publishers and content providers, specially local or small ones.
♦ AAI systems are generally implemented by IT departments at the institutional level, sometimes this is the same department as the Library IT service, but it is not always the case (e.g. academic libraries). In this case, library IT staff is not the responsible of AAI implementation and cannot take the last decision on this matter.
♦ Libraries benefit from consortia and national bodies in charge of licence negotiation for electronic resources, including the technical implementation for granting access to these resources. However, these bodies cannot force any particular implementation and just offer some support to institutions and, sometimes, service providers. They have limited power to force publishers to offer any technical solution.
♦ Publishers are constraining federated access implementation as they are reluctant to offer their resources through these technologies. For many of them it is complex at a technical level, and generally, they do not see the ROI until there is a critical mass of potential clients that demand these option.
♦ Some libraries do not see the added value of a federated AAI for their services, as their current solution is robust and easy enough. They asked for a clear value proposition on federated access benefits in order to consider a potential transition from their IP and proxies based model to a federated one.
♦ Libraries do not see the need for training sessions or materials in order to implement IdP or IdM. This could be related to the fact that they are not always responsible of this implementation. A further analysis could be done by checking on institutional IT departments, as well as national federated agencies (UK federator, RedIRIS, WAYF, HEAL Link, SWITCHaai).
♦ There is a need of training materials or basic information resources about what is federated access and which are the real benefits for libraries. Videos, social media publications, leaflets and other easy to use resources would be appreciated by librarians.
♦ Libraries consider that they could benefit from AARC project support in the process of harmonization of federated AAI technologies and implementations, lowering the barriers for their adoption. The main barriers are mainly technical, and therefore economic as the implementation is considered to be expensive, but also political, as the publishers position is considered to be a major constraint.
♦ Libraries would be in favour of adopting a federated access model but it has to prove to be easy, robust, stable and unified and widely accepted.