[Dspace-general] restricting access to a collection by IP

[MacKenzie Smith]

Hi Betsy,

You are correct: access control is based on authenticated individuals (i.e. 
either by logon/password or digital certificate).
The usual model is to register everyone who is allowed to have access to 
the collection, put them in a group, and assign
read permission for the collection to that group. And if fact, to limit 
access to the registered students in a course that's
exactly the sort of thing you'd need to do... limiting by IP simply won't 
work for that case.

With some programming you could probably change the system to 
add/update/delete e-people on the basis of data from
your registrar's database, but otherwise the DSpace system administrator 
would probably have to do that (end users
can't register themselves now, except to subscribe to collections in order 
to get notified of new additions). And I don't
believe the system currently notifies anyone when a new e-person is 
added... it's assumed that the system administrator
is doing the adding and the group assignment centrally.

Hope this helps,

MacKenzie

At 10:50 AM 11/17/2004 -0600, kellyb at msnotes.wustl.edu wrote:
>A group has asked if it's possible to restrict access to a community or 
>collection by IP. While that seems to fly in the face of open access these 
>folks want to use the repository for their own class work, limiting access 
>to members of the class or program. As far as I can tell this isn't 
>doable. I believe we'd need to define a group, have them each register and 
>then put the registered individuals into the group and set access policies 
>for the group.
>
>However, that presents another problem. Is there a way for the 
>dspace/community/collection manager(s) to be notified when someone 
>registers? Does the registration process need to be modified locally to 
>enable this or to allow the person registering to send an email to the 
>admin at the same time asking to be put into a particular group?
>
>We're still learning v1.2, having tested the earlier versions for a year 
>or so. If the answers are obvious and I've overlooked them, my apologies. 
>However, if others have faced and addressed these issues I'd appreciate 
>your sharing how you managed them.
>
>Betsy Kelly
>Assesssment & Evaluation Liaison, MidContinental Regional Medical Library
>and
>Associate Director for Instructional Technologies & Library Systems
>Becker Medical Library
>Washington University School of Medicine
>Box 8132
>660 S. Euclid Avenue
>St. Louis MO 63110
>314-362-2783
>_______________________________________________
>Dspace-general mailing list
>Dspace-general at mit.edu
>http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/dspace-general

MacKenzie Smith
Associate Director for Technology
MIT Libraries
Building E25-131
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA  02139
(617)253-8184
kenzie at mit.edu