Hi, On Fri, Apr 11, 2008 at 9:32 AM, MJ Ray <mjr@phonecoop.coop> wrote:
Hi all! I just spotted a standard for OPAC web interfaces which LibLime seem to have signed up for last month. It's been under development since last summer, but it doesn't seem to have been mentioned on the list yet as far as I found.
The Digitial Library Federation (DLF) ILS-DI taskforce anncounced it's original call for participation last year; see http://blogs.lib.berkeley.edu/shimenawa.php/2007/05/23/ils_abstraction_api. LibLime's involvement thus far has been to accept an invitation sent in January to various vendors and some representatives of OSS discovery interfaces to attend a face-to-face meeting in Berkeley on 6 March.
Could one of the LibLimers tell us if this applies to Koha and if so, why's it good for Koha and were any other Koha vendors invited to collaborate, get involved or even informed?
As summarized by the link below, the ILS-DI has thus far achieved some notion of a glimmer of an agreement that a small set of APIs ought to be exposed by ILSs for use by external discovery systems such as VUFind and Endeca. This is not yet anything one could call a firm standard. However, part of the proposal is already supported in principle by Koha because of the OAI-PMH interface courtesy of Paul and the Ecole des Mines; for the rest the ILS-DI has not yet proposed any firm specifications. Frankly, the most immediate benefit if an clear API gets developed will be to the customers of the proprietary ILSs. However, LibLime expects that Koha users may well find such interfaces useful, either to use a separate discovery layer, participate in a union catalog, or for any other application that may arise. On February 21, prior to the meeting in Berkeley, the ILS-DI started a Google Group (http://groups.google.com/group/ils-di) to invite discussion of the proposal. This announcement was made to various library mailing lists, including CODE4LIB and NGC4LIB. Discussion of the proposal is ongoing, particularly for the item availability API, which at present has no useful binding to any existing library standard. This discussion is taking place primarily on the Code4Lib maling list, #code4lib, and also http://groups.google.com/group/jangle-discuss. I cannot speak definitively as to whether the ILS-DI invited other Koha vendors, although i assume not. However, the taskforce is in my opinion honestly open to input; if any other Koha vendors want to go beyond participating in the discussion lists and formally support (or reject, or ignore) the proposal, they are free to do so.
"At the meeting, participants agreed to support a set of essential functions through open protocols and technologies by deploying specific recommended standards. [...]
Undersigned by: [...] LibLime"
Source: http://blogs.lib.berkeley.edu/shimenawa.php/2008/04/04/ils_basic_discovery
Assuming that a workable specification arises from the ILS-DI process, LibLime will implement the required APIs, assuming nobody else has a burning desire to so. The code will be submitted to the Koha project per our normal practice; if the Koha community does not want it in the mainline, then LibLime will maintain it as a contrib. Regards, Galen -- Galen Charlton Koha Application Developer LibLime galen.charlton@liblime.com p: 1-888-564-2457 x709