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**Apologies for cross-posting**

As a member of the working group for the Seamless Access Entity Attribute
Categories, I wanted to share the announcement of the open comment period
for these contributions.  Please do share this as widely as you believe is
appropriate, and please do comment! More info below and at:
https://seamlessaccess.org/posts/2020-07-08-entitycategories/

In order to encourage the clear and consistent operation of federated
authentication between Service Providers (such as scholarly publishers),
Identity Providers (such as campus IT administrators), and other
stakeholder groups (such as librarians), the SeamlessAccess Entity
Categories and Attribute Bundles Working Group has proposed three
specifications that aim to provide a common set of terms and definitions
for use when describing exactly what information should be requested by the
Service Provider as well as what should be released (if any) by the
institution to enable access to online materials.

These specifications, called Entity Categories, are offered to allow
administrators of identity management systems to have easy-to-use
configuration guidance that supports appropriate information sharing
between parties.

The three entity categories are:

Authentication Only
<https://wiki.refeds.org/display/CON/Entity+Category+Consultation%3A+Authentication+Only>
- this use case covers authentication only; the Service Provider does not
want any attributes (specific pieces of data about an authenticated user)
from the Identity Provider, only a confirmation that the authentication was
successful.

Anonymous Authorization
<https://wiki.refeds.org/display/CON/Entity+Category+Consultation%3A+Anonymous+Authorization>
- this use case supports authorization decisions through the sharing of
additional information such as entitlement data (e.g., faculty versus
student), while keeping the user completely anonymous to Service Providers.

Pseudonymous Authorization
<https://wiki.refeds.org/display/CON/Entity+Category+Consultation%3A+Pseudonymous+Authorization>
- this use case supports authentication, authorization, and allows for
personalization per Service Provider through the sharing of a per-service
user identifier without requesting any personal information such as name or
email address.

The public comment period starts on July 6, 2020, and will run for eight
weeks until August 31, 2020. Information on how to participate in the
consultation is here: https://wiki.refeds.org/display/CON/Consultations+Home.
Each entity category has its own consultation page.

NISO will be hosting a webinar on Monday, August 10, 2020, at 10:00 a.m.
EDT (14:00 UTC) geared towards librarians and publishers to discuss these
entity categories; registration information is available here:
http://www.niso.org/events/2020/08/seamless-access-presents-entity-categories-and-attribute-bundles
.
-------------------
Emily Singley
Head of Systems & Applications
Boston College Libraries
140 Commonwealth Ave. | Chestnut Hill, MA 02467-3801
Pronouns: she, her, hers
617-552-2918
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