Hi David:

On 11 May 2010 11:10, Christensen, David A. (CHT)
<[email protected]> wrote:
> This seems to be a topic a lot of folks have been thinking about :-)
>
> Here's where I'm coming from:  there are a lot of small public libraries
> in Manitoba (50 or so systems; just over 100 branches in total, so the
> average system is ~2 branches).  Most of these systems have z39.50
> servers.  Given that, we've built a z39.50-based federated search system
> for libraries (and patrons) to initiate interlibrary loan requests.
>
> This also gave us the ability to search electronic-only targets, such as
> EBSCOhost subscriptions, various Open Content Alliance libraries, and
> Project Gutenberg.  I was hoping to be able to add the Open Library to
> that list :-)  (and very specifically, search for DAISY format
> materials).
>
> I asked about z39.50 because that's what I'm familiar with (our
> federated search system - which I'm hoping to get green-lighted to
> release as open source - is written in Perl and uses the ZOOM module
> (and Yaz toolkit) from Index Data, and the MARC::Record module).  There
> are other options (SRU + XML modules), but I haven't played with them
> yet... Though I'm very much willing to experiment.
>

For your purposes, I think it would be practical (and relatively
easily possible) to set up a proxy SRU server that would translate
incoming SRU requests into OpenLibrary API searches (for the DAISY
books, subject_facet=Accessible book would appear to be the limiter)
and then translate the returned results into basic title / author /
publication info / 856 pointer to the DAISY file in MARCXML (or other
formats, if . Then you can drop Simple2ZOOM
(http://search.cpan.org/~MIRK/Net-Z3950-Simple2ZOOM/) on top of the
SRU server to provide Z39.50 support so that it would work within your
federated search system.

The SRU + Simple2ZOOM approach is how we offer Z39.50 access to
Evergreen, and it offers a nicely decoupled approach to providing
Z39.50 access for needs like yours where the goal is not necessarily
to get the richest MARC representation in existence back, but just
enough to do the job of confirming that the result matches the
request. The SRU piece is a bonus because it's a heck of a lot simpler
to develop and debug for mere mortals :) There's about 500 lines of
code starting at
http://svn.open-ils.org/trac/ILS/browser/trunk/Open-ILS/src/perlmods/OpenILS/WWW/SuperCat.pm#L1479
that the Evergreen piece is based on, but a large chunk of that is
configuration; it leans on the SRU Perl module
(http://search.cpan.org/dist/SRU/) to do the heavy lifting, and I'm
sure an implementation built that simply accesses the OpenLibrary API
could be a lot cleaner than what we currently have in Evergreen.
_______________________________________________
Ol-tech mailing list
[email protected]
http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-tech
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to 
[email protected]

Reply via email to