The ILS Discovery Interface Task Force, convened by the Digital
Library Federation (DLF), is studying the discovery needs of research
libraries and their patrons, in order to recommend interfaces to the ILS
that discovery applications can use.  We want to know what kinds of
discovery
applications (outside the traditional ILS public access catalog) are
most needed in libraries, and where machine-accessible interfaces
(APIs) to
the ILS and its data can better support these applications.

We'd like your help with this.  We've created a survey that you, or
other
appropriate people in your libraries, can fill out, to give us a better
idea of the functional needs your library has, the discovery
applications
you're using or considering adopting at your library, and the technical
infrastructure you're using or wanting to meet your needs.

Thanks to DLF support, we now have this survey posted on SurveyMonkey,
and we invite you to fill it out.  You're welcome to have multiple
people at your library submit it. (which may be useful if you have
different people thinking about functional requirements vs. technical
infrastructure), or you can collaborate on a single submission.  The
survey consists of 19 questions, and can be found at

   https://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=o1Kkl8qUfrmJ9sI4UNVnLQ_3d_3d

We will be meeting later this month to start drafting a set of
recommendations for APIs to the ILS, so we're on a fairly fast timeline.
For your response to be considered in our drafting, you need to respond
by *next Friday, September 14*.  (We may do some followup surveying of
folks who indicate they'd like to be contacted, but our main data
collection
will take place next week.)

We may post aggregated results and anonymized comments from the survey,
but nothing from the survey where particular respondents or libraries
can be identified.  Based on the results of this survey and our own
activities, we hope to present and hold an open discussion of a draft
proposal for ILS and discovery application integration at the upcoming
DLF Fall Forum in Philadelphia in November.

We look forward to hearing from you.  Thank you for your help!

   John Mark Ockerbloom
   Chair, ILS Discovery Interface Task Force