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You know, as I think about trying to integrate my own code into that framework, I realize that my own code is Ruby, and that framework is PHP. And I realize that what we _really_ need is not a programming library in a particular environment, but a set of (simple! simple!) HTTP XML APIs that we can implement for each ILS. You could say "Gee, we already have these, MARC-XML and SRU and whatever (does marc holdings have an xml format? Cause it's holdings we're really interested in at the moment, it seems), but it hasn't been implemented." So maybe we've got to pare it down and make it simpler, something we can start with bare bones for what we want to do. Take David Walker's code for instance, and see what data it actually retrieves/exposes through PHP API. And then expose that data in an XML structure from an HTTP rest-ish request instead. And provide some kind of (SRU?) interface for searching what we need to search (maybe just on isbn/issn for now?). If someone specifies such a thing, I will try to provide such an interface to Horizon. Then everyone, via screen scraping or direct db access or whatever methods their ILS provides, can go about providing such a thing for their ILS. And soon we have an ILS-independent 'standard' API for accessing, well, at least certain information we need for services we want to provide.And the open source ILSs can add it too, directly, instead of hacky screen scraping, etc. Jonathan Godmar Back wrote: > On 5/8/07, Karen Tschanz <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >> Hi, Godmar: >> >> I would be interested in receiving links from libraries that has >> implemented this, so that I could see the results. Thanks for your help! > > Given that what I propose is still in the design phase/vaporware, > asking for examples may be premature .... yet here is one: > http://libx.org/libxess/cue.html shows what a possible application of > this technology might look like. > > Also, keep in mind that what I'm proposing is not a new service that > libraries could deploy directly to their users -- rather, it's a piece > of infrastructure that would allow libraries to deploy services built > on this infrastructure to their users. > > It's a bit of a chicken and an egg problem, except that we will go > ahead and provide an initial chicken (LibX) and an initial egg > (David's script.) > > - Godmar > -- Jonathan Rochkind Sr. Programmer/Analyst The Sheridan Libraries Johns Hopkins University 410.516.8886 rochkind (at) jhu.edu