[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] Android app and 856 links, any shortcuts?

[Mike Rylander]

On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 9:19 AM, Galen Charlton <gmc at esilibrary.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Sun, Jan 17, 2016 at 1:19 PM, Ken Cox <kenstir at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Has anyone found any shortcuts to make the checkout process less cumbersome?
>> For instance, if the app knew the library card number a priori, could I
>> construct a URL that lands closer to checkout?  Or login to the catalog
>> before following the resource link?
>
> In the general case, no, or at least not in one fell swoop -- there
> are a variety of services that libraries contract with to provide
> ebooks, and they don't all use the same APIs.  The news is better for
> specific services such as OverDrive, where there is work underway to
> have Evergreen use OverDrive's APIs to perform direct checkouts and
> provisioning of ebooks.
>
> As far as Axis 360 is concerned, it looks like Baker and Taylor
> advertises some sort of "ILS integration", but I'm not sure whether
> that will support direct checkout and download of ebooks via the ILS.
> Hopefully folks from libraries using Axis 360 will chime in.
>

To look at it from a slightly different direction, it's really up to
B&T to make the process seamless since they are supplying just a bare
link to the library.

Evergreen supplies APIs for 3rd parties to use, for example, to verify
pre-existing Evergreen sessions.  This allows them to make sure that
the requesting patron is from an authorized library.  There are
services making use of that particular API today -- the online
database service call Galileo that PINES provides to its patrons has
been using it since Evergreen version 1.0 -- and we would love to see
other 3rd party services make use of (and even extend) what Evergreen
already provides.  There are other mechanisms as well that an outside
agent could leverage.

--
Mike Rylander
 | President
 | Equinox Software, Inc. / The Open Source Experts
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