E-book technology firm ebrary, US, has announced that customers can now use the Shibboleth authentication system to access any of the company's integrated products. These include e-books licensed under subscription and purchase models; ASP e-publishing services for distributing digitised documents online; and ISIS, its standalone e-publishing system that runs on customers' servers, behind their firewalls.
Shibboleth allows libraries and other organisations to control and manage individual access to protected online resources offered by the institution, third-party vendors, or both. End-users can be authenticated for multiple electronic resources using a single username and password.
As with the Athens system, end-users that access ebrary through Shibboleth will have personal bookshelves automatically created for them, allowing them to use folders to organise and manage entire documents as well as highlights and notes. ebrary also offers additional tools that enhance the research process, such as a choice of viewing technologies, including QuickView for instant document viewing in a browser; InfoTools that integrates content in the ebrary system with additional resources in the library and on the web; multiple options for searching and navigating; and automatic citations when text is printed or copied and pasted, with a URL hyperlink back to the source.
