Sharing Academic Resources Using Shibboleth
Building on key parts of the Shibboleth® architecture, The Pennsylvania State University’s LionShare Project is an innovative effort to facilitate legitimate file-sharing among individuals and educational institutions around the world. Currently, many online academic digital collections remain difficult to find or access. By combining peer-to-peer technology with federated authorization, Lionshare provides an easier, authenticated means to exchange image collections, video archives, large data collections, and other types of academic information.
Vice Provost for Information Technology
The Pennsylvania State University
September 2004 marked the first alpha release of the LionShare software. The LionShare project began as an experimental software development project at Penn State to assist faculty with digital file management. The project has now grown to be a collaborative effort among Penn State, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Open Knowledge Initiative, researchers at Simon Fraser University, and the Internet2 Middleware Initiative.
A generous grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation provided initial funding for the project.