OpenAthens odyssey: challenges of implementing federated authentication for a multi-institutional user population.

Background: The Texas Medical Center (TMC) is home to one of the world's largest cohorts of faculty, students, researchers, and clinicians who rely on seamless and immediate access to digital biomedical and health resources. This group is served by the TMC Library, with a collection that includes ov...

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Publicado en:Journal of the Medical Library Association Vol. 109; no. 4; pp. 648 - 656
Autores principales: Romano, Joanne, Huynh, Nha
Formato: case study pictorial Journal Article
Publicado: University of Pittsburgh, University Library System Oct2021
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
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      pub: University of Pittsburgh, University Library System
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        atl: OpenAthens odyssey: challenges of implementing federated authentication for a multi-institutional user population.
      aug:
        au:
          Romano, Joanne
          Huynh, Nha
        affil: Head of Resource Management and Discovery Services, The Texas Medical Center Library, Houston, TX
      sug:
        subj:
          Libraries, Health Sciences
          Information Technology
          Systems Implementation
          Privacy and Confidentiality
          Publishing
      ab: Background: The Texas Medical Center (TMC) is home to one of the world's largest cohorts of faculty, students, researchers, and clinicians who rely on seamless and immediate access to digital biomedical and health resources. This group is served by the TMC Library, with a collection that includes over 380,000 ebooks and 59,000 ejournals. In 2018, the TMC Library implemented OpenAthens, a federated authentication system to replace a locally hosted instance of EZproxy. Case Presentation: The TMC Library is unique in its multi-institutional user population, which presents distinct challenges in adopting a single sign-on authentication system. Our project involved OpenAthens technical support, information technology teams from six academic institutions, and over thirty publishers. Implementation included the creation of an OpenAthens parent account, an active user directory, a resource catalog, and installation of our OpenAthens credentials at each publisher site. Because the TMC Library serves multiple institutions, OpenAthens built a custom login page and a portal to support both single sign-on and a generic username and password option. This case report discusses the reasons why OpenAthens was chosen, the preparation methods for implementation, the various challenges encountered and resolved, and recommendations for other health sciences libraries considering this system. Conclusions: The OpenAthens system provides important benefits: granular usage reports, single sign-on access, and data to negotiate reduced pricing for online resources. With prior knowledge and preparation, health sciences libraries can successfully implement OpenAthens with customizations tailored to their specific resources and user population.
      pubtype: Academic Journal
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        case study
        pictorial
        Journal Article
      ougenre: Article
    language: English
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