Greetings -
The Digital Library Federation is pleased to announce the release
of the technical recommendation of its ILS Discovery Interface (ILS-DI)
Task Group. This document recommends standard interfaces for
integrating the data and services of the Integrated Library System
(ILS) with new applications supporting user discovery. Such standard
interfaces will allow libraries to deploy new discovery services
to meet ever-growing user expectations in the Web 2.0 era, take full
advantage of advanced ILS data management and services, and encourage
a strong, innovative community and marketplace in next-generation
library management and discovery applications.
A group of eight professionals from major North American research libraries
prepared the recommendation during late 2007 and early 2008. Members of
the group surveyed the library community about their needs, made
presentations, and held open discussions face to face and online with
librarians, developers, and vendors. The group made multiple recommendation
drafts and other background information publicly available on the task
group's Wiki, and invited comments and suggestions from interested parties.
In March, the DLF convened a meeting that brought together Task Group
members and representatives of library system vendors and developers,
and produced the "Berkeley Accord", an agreement about the most essential
and feasible interfaces to include in an initial set of interfaces.
This set of interfaces, called the "Basic Discovery Interfaces", is
described in detail in the new ILS-DI recommendation. The recommendation
also describes and recommends a variety of other functions to support
higher levels of interoperability.
The Digital Library Federation has made the recommendation, and related
materials prepared by the ILS-DI Task Group, available on the DLF website:
http://diglib.org/architectures/ilsdi/
Besides the recommendations, this site includes links to presentations
on the ILS-DI Task Group's work, XML schemas used in the recommended
formats for Basic Discovery Interfaces, information from the Task Group's
survey of library professionals, and links to example prototype
implementations of the Basic Discovery Interfaces.
For the recommendations to be truly successful in promoting
interoperability, they need to be implemented for ILS's, and used in
discovery applications.
Toward that end, the DLF is planning a developer's workshop, in which
those interested in implementing the Basic Discovery Interfaces can find
out more about the recommendations, learn about the required interfaces
and how they can be implemented, meet with potential partners for
developing and using the interfaces, and form a development community
that may help establish higher levels of interoperability and refine
the recommendations into practical standards. More information about
this meeting will be released shortly.
The Berkeley Accord and the DLF ILS-DI recommendation are important
first steps in building advanced, interoperable architectures for
bibliographic discovery and use in the networked world. We look forward
to working with the library community, both non-profit and for-profit,
in building on this work to enable the development of the best library
services for research and learning.
Thank you !
