The University of West London

Shibboleth

Project Nabataea - improving access to resources and services at University of West London

This project ended on 31/03/2007. 

The final project report is now available under project dissemination.

The University of West London e-Direct service created by this project is now available and currently provides access to 29 suppliers and 67 individual Shibbolised and Shibboleth-to-Athens gateway compliant resources.

University of West London is being funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) to become an early adopter of Shibboleth technology. The project proposal was made in response to the JISC Circular 05/05: Early Adopters - Call for Proposals as part of the Core Middleware: Infrastructure Programme. The project is called Nabataea and is funded until December 2006. The project is an initiative of Learning and Information Services (LIS) and is being carried out within the department by Learning and Research Support (LRS) and Corporate Systems Group (CSG) working in collaboration.

Learning and Research Support currently maintain separate Athens usernames and passwords for all students by carrying out regular bulk uploads of data taken from the student records database. Once Shibboleth technology is fully implemented, users will be able to access most electronic resources by logging in just once using their network password.

The project will implement a pilot Shibboleth authentication / authorisation system for electronic resources at University of West London. The pilot Shibboleth service will involve students based at the Ealing, Slough and Reading sites. The aim is to roll out Shibboleth access to a range of electronic resources to approximately 1000 students on selected courses. This will be extended to all members of University of West London once the service has been suitably tested and refined.

The project will also explore the use of Shibboleth within the institution, with possible integration with the institutional VLE through Single Sign On.