ILS Interop

A place to work on developing an infrastructure for interoperating between integrated library systems and other systems, but primarily discovery layers such as Blacklight, VUFind, Summon, WorldCat Local, SOPAC, Scriblio, and others.

See our mailing list at http://groups.google.com/groups/ils-di.

This group worked to create a spec / recommendation for a set of functions that ILS systems would implement in order to support 3rd party discovery systems.

The work of this group is archived on the DLF website (final report).

List of functionality

Level 1: Basic Discovery Interfaces This level represents a minimal set of functions that are easily implemented and essential to support applications that provide discovery outside the ILS.

• HarvestBibliographicRecords
• HarvestExpandedRecords (expanded records include bib, marc holdings, and item info)
• GetAvailability (for a single title or a list)
• GoToBibliographicRequestPage (basically the ability to link directly to an OPAC full record page)

Level 2: Elementary OPAC supplement This level describes a set of functions needed for a reasonably broad range of practical discovery applications that operate in tandem with the OPAC. All of the above, plus

• HarvestAuthorityRecords
• HarvestHoldingsRecords (where 'holdings' generally refers to structured marc holdings as opposed to just item records)
• GetRecords (real-time via identifiers, as opposed to harvest)
• Search
• Scan (support browse)
• GetAuthorityRecords
• Either OutputRewritablePage or OutputIntermediateFormat

Level 3: Elementary OPAC alternative This level describes a set of functions needed for a practical discovery application that can operate completely independently of the OPAC. All of the above, plus

• LookupPatron (I think this was going from a possible external identifier, like campus ID, to the internal ILS identifier)
• AuthenticatePatron
• GetPatronInfo (fines, holds, loans, recalls, messages, etc.)
• GetPatronStatus
• GetServices (services available for a particular item for a particular patron)
• RenewLoan
• HoldTitle
• HoldItem
• CancelHold
• RecallItem
• CancelRecall

Level 4: Robust/domain specific discovery platforms This level describes functions required to build useful discovery applications beyond the elementary level. All of the above, plus

• SearchCourseReserves
• Explain (this is really a placeholder for an SRU type explain that says which functions have been implemented)
• Both OutputRewritablePage and OutputIntermediateFormat