Matching people and information resources: authentication, authorisation and access management and experiences at Macquarie University, Sydney

New horizons are beginning to emerge in terms of matching people and inform ation resources in a networked service environment. Librarians, publishers, subscription agents, database hosts and information service aggregators ar e now actively engaged in rethinking information landscapes, in harnessing Internet technologies, and in finding ways to link institutional legacy sys tems to the web technologies in a manner that will appear transparent to th e user. There is, as yet, no coherent view of the new service models and th is paper attempts to foreshadow a conceptual framework on which to build su stainable service models and technical infrastructure. In doing so, particu lar attention is paid to the key issues of authentication, authorisation an d access management which are basic building blocks for the creation of a s ecure and efficient networked information service environment. The experien ces gained at Macquarie University with projects such as LIDDAS and PRIDE h ave helped in the development of the ideas presented in this paper.