Quoting Lori Bowen Ayre <[email protected]>:
Jason,
This is a more technical discussion than I can participate in, in any deep
way, but could you talk a bit more about how this module would relate to
protocols such as SIP2, SIP3 (in development), NCIP and NCIP2?
This module doesn't relate to those other protocols.
We often have vendors of services that want some simple list of
information from their customer such as a list of ISBNs of copies
owned by the library, or in the case of Wowbrary a list of
bibliographic record ids, the owning library's database id, and the
copy's creation or active date. More often than not, the vendor
prefers to get the information in a CSV file rather than XML or some
more cumbersome format.
None of the above protocols really address those situations, and we
all (those of us running the ILS) end up re-implementing the wheel or
borrowing the wheel from someone who has already implemented it for a
given vendor.
My proposal is to add a central, standard place in Evergreen to
implement data feeds for such vendors that can use them. When someone
creates an implementation for a new vendor, it could be easily shared
with the community and added to the master repository so that it
becomes a standard feature of Evergreen, available for anyone else who
needs to use it.
In the long run, I hope this reduces confusion and reduces duplication
of effort.
Also, I'd like to make sure everyone is aware of a UK development that
might be pertinent to this discussion. It is the Data Communication
Framework for Libraries that is being commissioned by BIC (Book Industry
Communication). Information and a draft (version .9) of the communication
framework is here:
http://www.bic.org.uk/e4libraries/16/INTEROPERABILITY-STANDARDS/.
In brief, the BIC DCFL represents a new set of library interoperability
standards which define "a framework for the communication of data between
self-service devices and other library terminal applications to and from
library management systems. This framework replicates and extends the range
of activities commonly conducted using 3M's open SIP.2 protocol and
additionally provides web services functionality for the exchange of
information." I do know that one of the incentives for developing this
framework is to take advantage of the expanded possibilities associated
with RFID tags now that we have some data model standards to work with.
I'm not sure this initiative in the UK has any bearing on the particular
issue Jason is addressing but in case there was overlap and/or interest...I
wanted to make sure people were aware of it.
Thank you for sharing that with us. I was not aware of this effort, so
I'll take a deeper look. From your description, however, it sounds
like it will have little to no bearing on what I am proposing.
My proposal is not meant for circulation or resource discovery. It is
aimed mainly at those vendors who supply extra content outside the
catalog. They very often need to get lists of specific data from the
catalog in a timely and efficient manner. As I mentioned in my notes
on the wiki page, this isn't intended as a replacement for anything
that already exists.
Jason Stephenson
MVLC
