[OPEN-ILS-DEV] Proposal for a Vendors' Module

[Jason Stephenson]

Quoting Lori Bowen Ayre <lori.ayre at galecia.com>:

> 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