Re: NGLMS4LIB?

To answer your second question first, this is exactly what I hope we can
see happening. Given appropriate interfaces, having a DLS but with
cataloguing done via OCLC (or other 3rd party cataloguing client) is a
possibility that this thread is trying to explore.

To go back to your first question - if OCLC can provide a quality,
affordable cataloguing experience, it may well end up dominating the
market in cataloguing, but if we get to a DLS, then we might see better
products competing to provide this excellent cataloguing. As with the
NGC, where 'Local Worldcat' is competing against traditional OPACs and
new style products like VuFind, Fac-Back-OPAC, Endeca, Primo, Encore,
etc.

What I think Mark has started to do is define some of the 'joins' we
would need to see. As well as those things that are missing from the
current clients, we may also need to think about things that exist in
current clients because they are part of an ILS - these would need to be
replicated in a DLS.

Owen Stephens
Assistant Director: e-Strategy and Information Resources
Imperial College London Library
Imperial College London
South Kensington
London SW7 2AZ


Tel: 020 7594 8829
Email: o.stephens_at_imperial.ac.uk


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Frances Dean McNamara
> Sent: 23 October 2007 16:24
> To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] NGLMS4LIB?
>
> I think an alternate suggestion is not to have a cataloging module at
> all and to only use OCLC.  Why create a standalone cataloging module
> when that is what OCLC specializes in?
>
> So, can you have a "disintegrated library system" (DLS
> instead of ILS?)
> where there is no cataloging module, all cataloging is done on OCLC?
>
> Frances McNamara
> University of Chicago
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Stephens, Owen
> Sent: Monday, October 22, 2007 10:39 AM
> To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] NGLMS4LIB?
>
> Mark wrote
> > So why not?  I'm not a database guy, but it seems to me that if a
> > standard database scheme was created to store all the types
> of data an
> > ILS needed, wouldn't that solve 99% of the problem?
> Couldn't we tack
> > on any company's circ software, assuming it knew how to
> read and write
> > to our database?  In terms of what the user wants to accomplish,
> > aren't the basic tasks pretty much predictable?
> >
>
> I'm not sure you need to go as far as a standard database. Considering
> the small number of large LMS suppliers in the market, actually even
> building an interface to each one is a minimal amount of work (6 major
> systems, 4 major suppliers?) - if only they all had published API to
> work with...
>
> In some cases standard APIs already exist. For Circulation
> SIP2 or NCIP
> would surely cover the vast majority of tasks you want to
> carry out. In
> my previous employment we implemented Self Issue using RFID
> and we were
> achieving >90% of loan transactions at the self service
> machines. These
> had their own client s/w which the user interacted with, with the
> communication back to the LMS by SIP2.
>
> There might be some circ stuff ('supervisory' functions?) that isn't
> covered here, but this should be a minimal number of transactions.
>
> To pick up Mark's example of a cataloguing client, an easy approach
> would be simply to create MARC records in a stand alone client that
> could then be imported into one or more LMS (solving Mark's problem of
> cataloguing over several different LMS systems). As Karen noted, Mark
> isn't asking for the world - the stuff he suggests is relatively
> straightforward I think. There are questions about where the
> data comes
> from perhaps, but if things such as the Authority files and encoded
> field lists could be supplied via a web service, then the
> client itself
> would be quite 'lite'.
>
> Are there any good standalone cataloguing clients already? What are
> there drawbacks compared to the LMS? (I guess you lose some workflow
> benefits?)
>
> Owen
>