HAERVI Project background 

Students and staff in HE institutions frequently need to consult materials held in the libraries of other HE institutions. This may be for personal convenience (students living at a distance from their home institution) or because of the need to consult specialist research materials not held by the home institution. Most HE libraries now have systems in place to allow visitors to consult printed materials - the SCONUL Vacation Access scheme, SCONUL Research Extra, UK Libraries Plus and Inspire all provide structures within which access to printed materials can be offered, and a number of regional collaborative arrangements also exist. However an increasing proportion of HE library stock is now held in electronic form only, and this proportion is likely to increase. In most institutions it is only possible to access this material if individuals have a network account, and such accounts are normally only provided to students and staff of the institution. Restrictions on access to institutional networks exist to support network security, and also to comply with legal conditions governing access to various electronic materials and software. As a result, however, bona fide academic visitors are often unable to gain access to these electronic materials.

To help overcome this problem, SCONUL and UCISA have launched this joint project, funded by JISC, to develop a toolkit to assist in providing workable solutions. It is unlikely that a single solution will suit all universities and colleges, so we hope that the toolkit will offer a number of options. The project name is HAERVI (Higher Education Access to e-Resources in Visited Institutions) and it officially began on 1 October, 2006 and is due to be complete by 31st May, 2007. The project officer is Paul Salotti, now a consultant and formerly Director of the University Computing Service at Newcastle University.

A range of relevant work has already been undertaken around this area in recent years:

• JISC and Eduserv Chest have revised the terms of their Model Licence to allow walk-in user access under certain circumstances. The new Model Licence is very welcome to institutions wishing to offer visitor access to e-resources, but it does mean that the onus is now on institutions to find ways of implementing the terms of the licence.
• The UK Computing Plus project undertaken by UK Libraries Plus (www.uklibrariesplus.ac.uk) in 2002 asked HE libraries to investigate different ways of allowing visitor access to e-resources. A further survey in 2006 established that there are still difficulties for libraries in offering IT access to visitors.
• The Research Information Network is carrying forward a project investigating access for members of the public to research output held by HE institutions in electronic form. While the target stakeholder group is different for RIN, SCONUL and UCISA anticipate working closely with RIN to ensure that both projects can benefit from the work undertaken in each area.
• JANET Roaming (see http://www.ja.net/roaming/) is a service that lets a guest user (for example staff and students visiting another organisation) use their own username and password to gain guest network access at a visited organisation. Visitors no longer need to be issued with temporary accounts - instead they are authenticated via the JANET Roaming service.
• Ongoing work with Shibboleth should make it easier for institutions to identify and classify visitors from other HE institutions. In connection with the JANET Roaming service above this may facilitate a route for enabling visitors to access e-resources licensed to the visited institution, but again does not by itself solve this problem.

The toolkit will build on previous work by the UK Computing Plus pilot and will resemble UCISA's Information security toolkit, although on a smaller scale.

The project, named HAERVI (HE Access to E-Resources in Visited Institutions) ran from October 2006 to July 2007, with the project report, which forms the basis for the Best Practice Guide, being approved at the meeting of the JISC Content Services Committee on 13 September 2007. Paul Salotti was the Project Officer for the HAERVI Project which was overseen by a Steering Group comprising Toby Bainton (SCONUL, Chair), Sara Marsh (then Swansea University, now University of Bradford), David Harrison (Cardiff University) and Caroline House (University of Sussex).