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.
Existing Efforts to Review
- DLF ILS Discovery Interfaces (see below)
- Document Availability API and DAIA Extensions
- Jangle
- Ümlaüt
- XC NCIP and OAI Toolkits
DLF ILS Discovery Interfaces
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
Existing Functionality
This section shows which systems are supported by which software packages. We should eventually build a chart; for now, we can start by listing details until we have a better idea of what standard entries belong in chart format.
VuFind ILS Drivers
The trunk VuFind drivers support various ILS's at different levels of detail. Some users have extended this through local customizations, but this list currently reflects only the baseline trunk code.
- Aleph - Item status, Patron details, Place holds (in progress in branch)
- Evergreen - Item status, New item list, Patron details, Suppressed record list
- Horizon - Item status, Patron details
- III - Item status
- Koha - Item status (incomplete)
- Unicorn - Item status; additional functionality may be available through the separate VuFind Unicorn project.
- Virtua - Course reserves, Item status, Patron details, Place holds, Renew items
- Voyager - Course reserves, Item status, New item list, Patron details, Place holds (in progress in branch), Suppressed record list