FOCUS AREAS

Library Access Management

Integrated access management for library information is an important and complex theme in higher education. There are several reasons for this:

The number of electronic sources is increasing
Users demand remote access
There is increasing variety in the types of users and their access rights.

Access management comprises registration, authentication, authorisation and accounting. Clearly, authentication is the responsibility of the institutions, whereas the responsibility for authorisation lies more with the information provider.

Authentication plays a part when people log onto web applications, for instance. A-Select, a middleware application, has been developed within SURFfoundation for reliable online identification based on person-specific objects. More information on A-Select is available elsewhere on the SURFfoundation website.

Access to content

Libraries and media collections are acquiring an increasing number of (consortium) licences for access to electronic sources. Authentication is used by Content Providers in order to be able to establish whether to grant access to the provided sources, usually by determining the IP range from which the access request originates. Until recently the IP numbers simply used to be those of workstations at a specific campus, but this technology has its limitations. More and more institutions of higher education wish to provide their staff and students with access 'anytime, anywhere'. This issue is also on the increase in digital learning environments. After all, they demand huge amounts of content with all sorts of links.