• Majid Valipour ([email protected])
• Dileshni Jayasinghe ([email protected])
• Jacqueline Whyte Appleby ([email protected])

Presented at TechKnowFile 2011

May 27, 2011

What is Scholars Portal (SP)?

Scholars Portal provides a shared technology infrastructure and a collection of collaborative services for Ontario’s 21 university libraries.

The Scholars Portal team consists of 10 technical staff, 10 librarians, two students, and a team lead.

Some Scholars Portal Services

RACER

• interlibrary loans service based on the Z39.50 protocol

SFX

• link resolver service

Journals

Books

ODESI

Journals

• journals.scholarsportal.info
• repository of over 20 million articles
• web and mobile bilingual interface

Books

• books.scholarsportal.info
• repository of over 360k books in electronic format

ODESI

• odesi.ca
• Allows users to search, tabulate, and analyse statistical data sets on the web
• searching data from dozens of different statistical agencies and polling companies

Works in Progress

Geoportal

• captures, stores, analyzes, manages, and presents data with reference to geographic location data.
• includes an integrated mapping tool
• intended as both a research and a literacy tool

Homogeneous Search API

• previous attempt based on OpenSearch 1.1

Mobile versions of services

• Books is in progress, mobile UI currently available for Journals

SP Authentication

Personalized services / user accounts

• bookmarks, notes, highlights, personal library, RefWorks integration

Design objectives:

• Use existing accounts
  • School’s authentication infrastructure (Shibboleth)
  • OpenId (Janrain Engage aka RPX)
• Easy integration with various SP applications
  • avoid multiple shibboleth service providers
  • work with different platforms

Architecture

Shibboleth

• A project by Internet2:

  “provides cross-domain single sign-on and attribute-based authorization”

• Used by many academic institutes. Canadian Access Federation in Canada
• Three components:
  • Browser (user)
  • Service Provider (us)
  • Identity Provider (schools)
• Attributes we requested:
  • persistent-id : used as persistent identifier to link returning users to their account
  • email (encouraged) : used to provide alert service to users
  • affiliation (optional) : used to provide differentiated service for various kinds of users (faculty, staff, etc…)
  • common name (optional) : used to fill user profiles

Janrain Engage (RPX)

• Abstracts authentication for Google/Yahoo!/MSN/Facebook etc.
• Imports profile info and provides unified API to access them

Example

1. Include the widget in your login page.
2. User will be redirected to return URL after authentication.
3. Extract the token parameter from the POST data.
4. Use the token to make the auth_info API call:
   • URL: https://rpxnow.com/api/v2/auth_info
   • Parameters:
     • apiKey: c04ad3eddbf6dbc918e9e0f5b36b5320d0e63
     • Token: The token value you extracted above

5. Parse the response and extract the identifier. A sample JSON response:

    {'stat': 'ok',
      'profile': {
        'identifier':'https://google.com/accounts/
                        o8/id=AItOawkOjEZcd',
        'email': '[email protected]',
        'preferredUsername': 'Chunky Bacon' } }
   

RefWorks API

• “Exposes the majority of RefWorks functionality in a REST format”
• Divided into classes that handle specific functionalities:
  • Attachments, Authentication, Authors, Descriptors, Periodicals, Folders, Batch, Deleted, ImportFilter, Manuscript, MyList, OutputStyle, Properties,PubMed, Reference, Retrieve, RSS, SavedSearch, ShareProperties, Subscriber, SubscriberPrefs, User, Utility, Z39
• We use Spring’s RestTemplate to access RefWorks API on the backend

Example

1. Ajax.Request("refworks/folders.html")

2. Controller extract RWSessionId from session and uses restTemplate to access:

    http://refworks.scholarsportal.com/api2/
    class=folder&method=all&sess=a23d4&
    accesskeyid=wd$3wrfderddml&expires=1224873890294&
    signature=SAvNT7%2Fq9R3TflOqzaTSfB%2B6VJg%3D
   

3. XML response or error codes are translated to a json response.
4. Json response is returned to client.

Lessons Learned

• Single sign-out is not really working
• Proxies considered harmful!
  • URL rewriting
  • Domain change
  • Test/Debug is not easy
• Provide a test page for sys-admins
• Privacy = no email address for you!

Thank you!

Questions?

Email us:

• Majid Valipour ([email protected])
• Jacqueline Whyte Appleby ([email protected])