Jorum

(25 July 2008)

If you use Jorum online services, then this document contains important information for you regarding logging in to, and authenticating against, Jorum services. These changes are the result of the lapsing of the agreement by which JISC contracts Eduserv to provide Athens access management to JISC-funded resources, including Jorum services. This agreement terminates on 31st July 2008.

From 1st August 2008, access to Jorum will be via the UK Access Management Federation. Access via Athens will cease on the 31st July 2008. Information about this changeover appears on the Jorum login pages and the wider background to this change can be found at this web page: http://edina.ac.uk/supportstaff/access_notes.html.

This change in access arrangements devolves more of the responsibility for technical support and implementation to individual institutions. So if you have any concerns about continued access to Jorum under the new access system your first enquiry should be to you local IT department and library.

Jorum requires the Identity Provider (IdP) to guarantee that they are able to verify the real identity of all users (user accountability) as part of its licence. An institution using OpenAthens has to set up a separate OpenAthens "virtual IdP" for gateway access to be able to be declared accountable.

Users at institutions operating an in house IdP will be required to re-register. After that the Jorum system should recognise you every time you login and you can then recreate your personal workflows and favourites etc. For those that had resources waiting in workflows to be processed; don’t worry we are keeping a back-up instance of Jorum for a year and if you contact our user support [support@jorum.ac.uk] you should be able to arrange transfer of your resources to your new workflow.

Access to Jorum services using Athens

If you currently log in to Jorum services using Athens, note that this mechanism will no longer be available after 31st July 2008. The buttons to "Login via Athens" will be removed:

You will need to use Shibboleth access management instead. Within the UK, Shibboleth access management is provided by the UK Access Management Federation, a JISC-funded initiative.

Using Shibboleth to gain access to Jorum services

Users at institutions using Shibboleth to access Jorum and other protected services will do so either by having installed their own Identity Provider (IdP) service or by having subscribed to an outsourced IdP service, such as Eduserv's OpenAthens. When the user logs into Jorum using Shibboleth, their nominated IdP service is automatically contacted to obtain and provide the necessary access credentials. These are then passed to the Jorum service for verification in the normal way.

User Accountability

Jorum requires the IdP to guarantee that a use of the protected service can be traceable back to the originating user. This requirement, known as "User Accountability", is usually a consequence of licensing conditions.

Whether an IdP asserts User Accountability or not is a property of the IdP and a consequence of the organisation's internal procedures. Users attached to an IdP which does not assert User Accountability will not be able to gain access to any service that requires it.

Here is a current list of IdPs asserting user accountability.

Using OpenAthens gateways to gain access to Jorum services

Users coming in to Jorum via OpenAthens will continue to use their existing Athens login to access Jorum and for these users their existing personalised account details such as workflows and favourites will remain the same and not need to be recreated.

If you have any concerns about continued access to Jorum under the OpenAthens access system your first enquiry should be to your local IT department and library.