Aston University, based in central Birmingham, offers a broad range of graduate and post-graduate courses to 9,500 students. As well as education, Aston has a reputation as a center of research excellence, so fast and easy access to information resources is critical to teaching and learning.<\/strong><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n\n

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The challenge<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Providing licensed access to multiple online resources is becoming increasingly complex because license terms are opening up to allow more diverse types of users to access those resources. The problem is compounded by students and staff now spending more time working off-campus, and the University expanding its international partnerships.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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The library service at Aston University was using Shibboleth as its authentication system but they found it difficult to install and maintain, and they struggled to cope with complex multi-service, multi-user type access. In particular, people trying to access resources off-campus found logging on slow, that it was not the same process for each resource and, in some cases, simply failed. For example, publisher licenses allow different levels of access to different groups, such as international students or ex-staff, compared with home students. The Aston librarians found it difficult to configure Shibboleth to distinguish authentication between these groups.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Trying to adapt Shibboleth was in itself complex and complicated by the fact that the original developers had left the University.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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"The ease of use and flexibility of OpenAthens has been invaluable to Aston University in enabling us to transform the service we provide to students, staff and our partner institutions\u201d<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t