A new draft of recommendations for interoperability between ILS's and
discovery applications has just been released by the DLF's ILS-DI task force.
It can be obtained from the task force wiki at

https://project.library.upenn.edu/confluence/display/ilsapi/Draft+Recommendation

(For background on the project, you can explore the rest of the wiki,
  or see our presentation at the last DLF Forum:
   http://www.diglib.org/forums/fall2007/presentations/Ockerbloom.pdf )

This draft follows on the "Berkeley Accord" agreed to by many ILS and
discovery application developers and vendors, which was announced earlier this
month.  Among other things, the new draft gives detailed descriptions of
the Basic Discovery Interface (BDI) functions agreed to, and recommends
some simple standards for implementing these functions.  Prototype example
implementations of these standards are already in development, and I hope
to point to examples soon from the ILS-DI group website.

We intend this draft to be the last release before the official final version.
We do not expect to change the basic recommended functions in major ways in the
final draft, though there's a lot more that can be said and done to promote
interoperability beyond the first steps we've taken.  We expect and encourage
others to build on, refine, and implement these recommendations and follow-ons
to them.  We are still very interested in correcting and clarifying anything
that is erroneous, ambiguous, or unclear, particularly in the BDI functionality 
we recommend. Comments can be emailed to me between now and Friday, May 9; I'll
pass them along to the group.

The ILS-DI task force will be conducting a birds-of-a-feather discussion
session at the upcoming DLF Spring Forum in Minneapolis.  The session
will be held at 2:30 on Tuesday, April 29, in Greenway B on the second
floor of the conference hotel.  Topics of discussion include the
Berkeley accord, the draft recommendation and its upcoming finalization,
implementing the recommendation, and how we can continue and build on
efforts to promote and standardize interoperation between the ILS and
discovery applications, both in the DLF and elsewhere.

If you're interested, I hope you'll attend the session, and send me your
comments on the draft recommendation.

Hope to see you in Minneapolis!

John Mark Ockerbloom
for the DLF's ILS-DI task force