Athens is a national service run by EduServ under contract for JISC which is used to authenticate and authorise access to many library electronic resources. Athens is in effect a national userid and password storage and verification system. In the University, Athens authentication is currently managed by the University Library. We have approximately 17,000 Athens users.
The University's use of Athens has always been centrally funded by JISC, but this funding ceases in June 2008. EduServ plan to continue to operate the service on a commercial basis for the foreseeable future. JISCs official strategy is to replace Athens by Shibboleth.