I'm happy to announce that the DLF has convened a working group
to analyze issues involved in integrating integrated library systems
(ILS's) and discovery systems, and to create a technical proposal for
accomplishing such integration.

As you may remember, Peter Brantley put out a call for participation
on the DLF-ANNOUNCE list about a month ago.  A large number of nominations
came in, making it clear that there was both wide interest and
considerable expertise in the community for this project.  In order
to keep the group reasonably small and agile, an advisory group
eventually chose eight of the nominees for the working group, and all
have now accepted. They are:

     * John Mark Ockerbloom (Penn), chair
     * David Bucknum (Library of Congress)
     * Todd Grappone (USC)
     * Dave Kennedy (Maryland)
     * Emily Lynema (NC State)
     * Patricia Martin (California Digital Library)
     * Dianne McCutcheon (National Library of Medicine)
     * Terry Reese (Oregon State)

We hope to engage the expertise and interest of the community beyond
this working group, however.  Towards this end, we have set up a Wiki
for the project, much of which is open to public viewing and comment, at

    https://project.library.upenn.edu/confluence/display/ilsapi/

As Peter has noted, this is an initiative which should have great and
immediate benefit to all of us.  I look forward to working with the
group and with the wider community in this effort.

John Mark Ockerbloom
University of Pennsylvania