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]