Karen,

YAZ Proxy generally works great for this purpose. We use it all the time
with Voyager databases. But as others mentioned, you might have trouble
living with the III's Z39.50 server. We tried to use it from our portal,
but in the end we had to resort to screen scraping instead..

--Ere

Karen Coombs wrote:
> There are some very useful things one can get back from III via Z39.50.
> Terry Resse from OSU showed me that if you send a Z39.50 request for the
> "opac" syntax you can actually get back holdings information and whether or
> not something is checked out. I had no trouble playing around with this via
> the Z39.50 piece of MARC edit and getting back the data I wanted.
>
> Based on this info and reading about yaz-proxy, I've been hoping that by
> implementing yaz-proxy that I might setup an SRW/U service for III. Has
> anyone on this list considered this option or tried it out?
>
> Karen
>
>
> On 5/15/08 11:57 AM, "Cloutman, David" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> It is very clear to me, from trying to integrate into our III systems,
>> is that their ILS is desperately in need of being reworked into more of
>> an SOA model. The best that they can currently do for library developers
>> is sell us an RSS product, which I think probably falls short of what we
>> actually need. What we need is a well documented, functional,
>> standards-based web service that could be used to hook into other
>> applications. It seems to me that the best that many of us can do with
>> the III product in terms of automated integration is to grab data
>> through some sort of screen scraping.
>>
>> The fact that a product like Encore works at all, to me indicates that
>> there must be some sort of programmatic hooks in the catalog that we as
>> customers could leverage for our own purposes, but I have not been able
>> to find any documentation of these.
>>
>> Of course, empowering developers, or their customers in general, is not
>> in the III business model, so I don't think we can expect much from
>> them.
>>
>>
>>
>> ---
>> David Cloutman <[log in to unmask]>
>> Electronic Services Librarian
>> Marin County Free Library
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
>> Eric Lease Morgan
>> Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2008 5:39 AM
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Life after Expect
>>
>>
>> On May 15, 2008, at 8:32 AM, Kyle Banerjee wrote:
>>
>>> Just as the hot dog cookers and other one trick wonders in the kitchen
>>> are of very limited use, special purpose tools that attempt to define
>>> your problem and solution are not nearly useful as generic ones in an
>>> ILS context. I am still hoping that vendors will recognize that true
>>> interoperability is a feature that increases the value of the ILS more
>>> than just about anything else.
>>
>> Well said. The vendor who provides a suit of tools that can
>> interoperate with any number of other standards-based tools is as
>> vendor to establish close relationships with.
>>
>> --
>> Eric Lease Morgan
>> Head, Digital Access and Information Architecture Department
>> Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame
>>
>> (574) 631-8604
>>
>> Email Disclaimer: http://www.co.marin.ca.us/nav/misc/EmailDisclaimer.cfm
>
> --
> Karen A. Coombs
> Head of Libraries' Web Services
> University of Houston
> 114 University Libraries
> Houston, TX  77204-2000
> Phone: (713) 743-3713
> Fax: (713) 743-9811
> Email: [log in to unmask]
>


--
Ere Maijala (Mr.)
IT Research Specialist
The National Library of Finland
P.O.Box 26 (Teollisuuskatu 23)
FI-00014 University of Helsinki
FINLAND

ere.maijala(@)helsinki.fi
Tel. +358 9 191 44260