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
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