> From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
> [mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Eric Lease Morgan
> Sent: 01 February, 2008 22:49
> To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
> Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] LCC to Conspectus service / webservice?
>
> On Feb 1, 2008, at 6:15 PM, Houghton,Andrew wrote:
>
> >> OCLC has an XML API service intended to be used by _cataloging_
> >> software... I can't remember what it's called...
> >> "Terminologies Service"...
> >> And whenever I ask an OCLC person if
> >> they could license this service for use by end-user-facing
> services,
> >> and if so what it would cost...
> >
> > BTW, if you are an OCLC member library, it costs you nothing, it is
> > already included in your cataloging subscription. When you are
> > challenged for authentication, use your cataloging credentials.
>
> Are these various terminology services available if I write
> my own HTTP client against them?
If you have an OCLC cataloging authorization, you are set to go. The
Terminology Service conforms to Microsoft's Research Services. So it
is available in most Office applications and Internet Explorer. BTW,
you don't have to use the Terminology Service with just OCLC Connexion.
Since Internet Explorer acts as a container for the Office SOA client,
a use scenario might be that you point IE to a local Web based metadata
editing environment, like a local system or repository, and then use
the Terminology Service to find applicable terms that you might want to
add to items in your local system or repository.
Another scenario might be that you are maintaining a summer reading list
in Excel. You could use the Terminology Service to find term associated
with items on the reading list and add those terms to the Excel workbook
so you could group like reading materials together.
OK, those scenarios might be a little lame, but it's the best I could
come up with at midnight. The following information you might find
useful.
OCLC Terminology Services
<http://www.oclc.org/terminologies/>
OCLC Terminology Services SOA endpoint, e.g., point your HTTP client at
this URI:
<http://webservices.oclc.org/authorities/terminologies>
Documentation on how to interface to the OCLC Terminology Service
can be found here:
<http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/office/aa905529.aspx>
Caution, there is a lot of information at this URI to digest in order
to talk to Microsoft's Research Services. Most of the information is
on how to create a service that the Office SOA client talks to. So
basically you would be writing your own SOA client against the service
and the documentation doesn't directly address that however, the XML
schemas that go back and forth between the SOA client and the service
are documented.
Basically how this works is that the SOA client invokes the distributed
service at the above SOA endpoint by making a registration or query
Web service call and sends the Web service an XML packet conforming to
the documented schemas. The Web service then sends back an XML packet
conforming to the documented schemas. OCLC wrote the registration and
query Web service calls that are consumed by the SOA client, you would
have to create an appropriate XML packet to send to those Web services,
then do whatever you need with the response XML packet. Don't forget
your SOA client will be challenged for authentication, so you will need
to send your OCLC cataloging credentials using HTTP basic authentication,
I think.
The OCLC Terminology Service started as a Research prototype. We use to
have a few non-commercial vocabularies running in the publicly accessible
prototype. Unfortunately, the server that it was running on was hacked,
after the production service was available, so it seemed like a good time
to end the prototype rather than spend the time to bring it up on a more
secure server.
We are working on a newer Terminology Services prototype, so if you have a
specific project in mind that would make use of these types of services I
would be interested in hearing about what you are doing. Feel free to
drop me an e-mail.
Andy.
Received on Sat Feb 02 2008 - 01:31:59 EST