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Yes, I know about this, and I think this is great ... for Evergreen users. My concern is how we get it out there to the majority of libraries who aren't on an OS platform and/or cannot make changes to their UI. As I think your post demonstrates, what we need is to get through to the system vendors and get them to implement this kind of linking. I intend to chat up vendors in the exhibits at ALA to find out what this means to them. I suspect they are reluctant to rely on a system or feature that may not be stable or persistent (a reasonable reluctance when you have thousands of installations), so then the question becomes: how can this be made to work? kc Quoting Dan Scott <[log in to unmask]>: > (Apologies in advance if this looks like crap, I hate trying to > reply in context in GroupWise) > >>>> On Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 10:55 AM, Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask]> wrote: >> Quoting Eric Hellman <[log in to unmask]>: >> >> >>> What are the reasons that this sort of integration not more >>> widespread? Are they technical or institutional? What can be done by >>> producers of open access content to make this work better and >>> easier? Are "unified" approaches being touted by vendors delivering >>> something really different? >> >> I've been struggling with this around the Open Library digital texts: >> how can we make them available to libraries through their catalogs? > > You're aware of the recent addition of the OpenLibrary Read API, > which is meant to simplify exactly this problem, right? > > The official announcement was at > http://blog.openlibrary.org/2011/06/03/announcing-a-new-read-api/ ; > http://ur1.ca/4g5bd describes how I integrated it into Evergreen > with a few hours' effort (mostly helping to debug the new service); > the official documentation is at > http://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/api/read and I augment those docs in > the latter half of the presentation I gave last week (available in > plain text, html, and epub formats at > http://bzr.coffeecode.net/2011_olita/ ). > >> When I look at the install documentation for Umlaut [1](I was actually >> hoping to find a "technical requirements" list), it's obvious that it >> takes developer chops. We're not going to find that in a small, >> medium, or often even a large public library. It seems to me that this >> kind of feature will not be widely available until it is included in >> ILS software, since that's what most libraries have. > > The OpenLibrary digital editions enhancement approach I took in > Evergreen was about 100 lines of JavaScript (around here: > http://ur1.ca/4g5cm ), most of which could probably be cloned (under > the GPL v2 or later) to any other library system from which you can > scrape ISBNs or other identifiers (LCCN, OCLC, or OpenLibrary IDs). > > Note that the Evergreen-OpenLibrary integration hasn't been merged > yet, but the branch is there and will hopefully make its way into > core Evergreen soon. > -- Karen Coyle [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet