If it’s a public one (and we limit our ideas to a national domain, because that’s the way things normally get funded) our ideas will revolve around using our public library cards as a proof of identification to (online) national resources; in the first instance as a way to keep the spam out of a citizens learning account. Over time, as TRUST BUILDS between remote communities, the degrees of authentication to ‘deeper’ inter- institutional repositories and resources could be added.

If we measure an institution by the number of its global domains (it’s VO’s) that are accessed by citizens, then its likely we might start to see (the aggregation of) more relevant institutions. We won’t see notice the passing of irrelevant institutions ones because, for the most part, they’re already so private, so comples, and considered so untrustworthy, they’re irrelevant.

For how many more years are we to hear that MAMS (and its peers) is “building a testbed federation between institutions”? It seems quite logical I know. But you have to believe that (educational) institutions never change, and there’s 2400 years of evidence, in the western world, to the contrary.