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I agree with Jonathan's points below, and would suggest that a robust enough WorldCat API should be sufficient to allow any library that has the desire and the capacity to integrate everything available there with whatever else they wish. Roy On 11/9/07 9:42 AM, "Jonathan Rochkind" <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Good points. > > "If I wanted a drop-in in one-size solution for resource discovery, from > a "corporate" supplier, for instance, I'd have to say that WorldCat > local looks pretty darn interesting. But the kind of locally-iterable, > modular, extensible toolkit that I think positions libraries well for > experimentation and innovation." > > There's another important reason this "kind of locally-iterable modular > extensible toolkit" is absolutely vital, in addition to "positioning > libraries well for experimentation and innovation." It's because we > absolutely need to functionally integrate our various _different_ > products from differnet vendors. Even if you go with WorldCat Local, you > still have many products from other vendors that you'd really like it to > integrate with (both on the end-user-interface, and on the backend staff > metadata control and other interfaces). The path to accomplishing this > is with that kind of "modular extensible toolkit"---dropping in an > ostensible "one-size solution" often only creates more problems with > lack of integration. > > We want "loosely coupled", but we're currently often stuck with "not > coupled at all", which causes no end of problems. > > Jonathan > > > Joe Lucia wrote: --