I'm working with the University of Oxford to look at integrating some library services into their VLE/Learning Management System (Sakai). One of the services is something that will give availability for items on a reading list in the VLE (the Sakai 'Citation Helper'), and I'm looking at the DLF-ILS GetAvailability specification to achieve this.

For physical items, the availability information I was hoping to use is expressed at the level of a physical collection. For example, if several college libraries within the University I have aggregated information that tells me the availability of the item in each of the college libraries. However, I don't have item level information. 

I can see how I can use simpleavailability to say over the entire institution whether (e.g.) a book is available or not. However, I'm not clear I can express this in a more granular way (say availability on a library by library basis) except by going to item level. Also although it seems you can express multiple locations in simpleavailability, and multiple availabilitymsg, there is no way I can see to link these, so although I could list each location OK, I can't attach an availabilitymsg to a specific location (unless I only express one location). 

Am I missing something, or is my interpretation correct? 

Any other suggestions? 

Thanks, 

Owen 

PS also looked at DAIA which I like, but this (as far as I can tell) only allows availabitlity to be specified at the level of items


Owen Stephens
Owen Stephens Consulting
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