Référence

Université Paris V

L'université Paris V a été précurseur de la mise en place d'un accès distant aux ressources documentaires pour ses chercheurs et ses étudiants. Voir plus

Leaflet

Biblio-PAM presentation

List of resources

Biblio-PAM - Remote access to documentary resources

Biblio-PAM provides remote access to the documentary resources of a library, from one's home or from any other Internet connection, via a secured and automatic mechanism of redirecting the users' requests. All necessary functionality is there to ensure contractual obligations to the content providers are respected, reserving access to legitimate and referenced readers.

The reader can browse to the documentary portal of the university or to the university intranet pages, wherever he may be located. The portal authenticates him by login and password, then it displays the resources available according to his access rights (granularity).

Convenience: Biblio-PAM's relaying is transparent and allows the service to be put into operation without affecting the user's behaviour or his running applications. The administration of the service is intuitive and does not require specific IT skills.
Flexibility: Biblio-PAM uses the existing authentication system.
Light weight: Contrary to costly VPN systems, Biblio-PAM does not require any deployment on the readers' computers.
Installation: In a very short time, the service is operational. No need for a big infrastructure, a single machine can handle many accounts (more than 30 000).

You can find more information on the community web site, particularly in the Extranet section.

Working principles

Biblio-PAM is a server hosted within the university's computing centre, connected to the user directory. The product works as a reverse proxy, acting as an intermediary between the university portal and the content provider web sites. This mode of operation enables the remote reader to see all the protected online content, as all requests come from within the university.

This implies the authentication of the readers, not through their IP address, but via a login stored in the university directory. Hence, the readers see a window asking them for their login and their password.

It is also possible to restrict access to certain costly resources to particular user groups: these resources are thus used in an optimal way, with regard to the contracts of usage.

Finally, the technical components of the solution are based on a Linux distribution. The reverse proxy is a module designed by Alixen which is part of the applicative ecosystem of the Apache web server. Biblio-PAM is supplied and maintained by Alixen, no complex system administration tasks are needed.

Biblio-PAM assists with the remote access management:

reader authentication by an LDAP directory, a CAS server, or a Shibboleth identity provider,
the possiblity to define reader profiles and to limit resource access depending on the profile,
logging of all completed actions and the generation of precise access statistics to the different resources, corresponding to several criteria.

Resources

Biblio-PAM supports many web sites of the most well-known editors, and this base only grows thanks to the mutualisation of configuration actions. The base is regularly updated and can be installed at all our customers within the maintenance contract.

Here is a list of most of the documentary resources that are accessible via Biblio-PAM. Don't hesitate to contact us concerning any resources that might not be listed.

References

Biblio-PAM is currently used by the following institutions for remote access to their electronic resources:

Ecole Centrale Paris
Ecole Supérieure d'Electricité (Supélec)
The Conservatoire national des arts et métiers
The Fondation de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme
The National Foundation of Political Science (Sciences Po)
The National Library of France
University of Angers
University of Evry - Val-d'Essonne
University of Marne La Vallée
University of Paris II - Assas
University of Paris V - Descartes
University of Paris VI - Pierre et Marie Curie
University of Paris IX - Dauphine
University of Toulouse I
University of Toulouse II
University of Toulouse III
University of Versailles / Saint Quentin en Yvelines

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