Revolutionizing Consortium Access with Athens Single Sign-on

Robin R. Sewell
Arizona Health Sciences Library, University of Arizona
Shannon Sweeny
EBSCO Australia

OBJECTIVE
The Arizona Health Information Network (AZHIN) is a consortium of 34 member health services institutions which range in size from academic institutions to small medical clinics. The goal of this project was to improve access to resources on-site and off-site by using a single sign-on product and improve the security of the resources by implementing a password management system.

METHODS
In the past non-IP authenticated on-site and off-site access required AZHIN members to use a different username and password for each vendor’s products. Athens was selected for its ability to interact with vendors, provide single sign-on access to resources, and for its password and account management features. Resource access management through Athens permissions sets simplified any changes to the resources available and provided a way for organizations to use Athens authentication for resources they purchase separately. This implementation had several challenges related to the custom delivery of resources accessed through dynamically generated web pages and the use of a custom login method. Another challenge was the management of variations in URLs used by vendors for IP and Athens authentication, especially in the context of LinkSource, EBSCO’s link resolver.

RESULTS and CONCLUSIONS
Athens is currently in use by 27 AZHIN member organizations, having added over 2,000 users in one year. The existing vendor-based password system will be discontinued at the end of June. Three of the larger academic institutions use local proxy systems for authentication and are not using Athens. Many of the obstacles could have been over come by requiring all users to log into Athens regardless of there ability to IP authenticate. We chose to take the more difficult route in order to provide more seamless access to resources when ever possible.