On Monday 28th June, Information Services will begin the process of transitioning our existing Shibboleth Identity Provider service to the latest version. Shibboleth is an authentication system used at Stirling to provide access to some
of the Library’s electronic resources (http://www.is.stir.ac.uk/itsupport/accounts/shibboleth.php  ) and this upgrade is necessary because the current system we are using becomes unsupported at the end of June.
Due to major differences between the old and the new versions, the transition to the latest version of Shibboleth is not a simple “in place upgrade”. Instead it will be necessary to run both the old and the new version in parallel, whilst we wait for the various Service Providers with whom we interoperate to move from the old service to the new one (a process we have no control over). Once all our Service Providers have switched to using our new Shibboleth Identity Provider service, then the old service will be switched off.
Information Services are obviously working hard to make this transition as seamless as possible to end users, but, because of the way Shibboleth works, it is not possible to fully test the new system against all our existing Service Providers until they have switched from the old to the new system. Therefore there may be a few teething problems, especially with Service Providers who do not regularly update their information about available Shibboleth Identity Providers. We therefore intend to closely monitor all services during this transition period so that any problems can be quickly identified and resolved.
To further help minimise any disruption during this transition period, we have also switched a number of our existing Shibboleth protected resources over to using EZProxy authentication on the A-Z list (http://www.is.stir.ac.uk/resource-db/az-list.php ).
These resources will be switched back to using Shibboleth as individual providers transition to our new Shibboleth system.
If you experience any problems getting access to any of the Library’s Shibboleth protected electronic resources during this transition period (or at any other time for that matter), please don’t hesitate to contact the Information Centre on infocentre@stir.ac.uk
Regards,
Michael White
Shibboleth Project Manager