JISC

Final Report now available

Overview

A workshop at the OAI5 conference in April 2007 identified a need for improved attribute managed federated access to repositories, and produced a set of requirements. The Federated Access to Repositories (FAR) project would take up this list, and use it to:

• Create recommendations for attributes to describe authorisation to repositories; where appropriate, these recommendations will be passed to relevant standards groups
• Develop extensions to the repository software (EPrints and DSpace) so that it can be used with Shibboleth and meet these requirements (building on earlier work where this exists)
• Test existing work integrating Shibboleth and Fedora and recommend to developers what will be needed to meet these requirements
• Install demonstration repositories to show how this can work in practice
• Feed the modifications and full documentation into the appropriate repository software development process to ensure maintenance through future releases of Eprints and Shibboleth
• Develop procedures to consider ways of extending federated access management to new functionality introduced into the repository software products following the conclusion of the project

A demonstrator of the software will be produced as well as a final version.