My impression was that the "Microsoft Research Services" API was
sufficiently simple and rational that there's no reason you should be
limited to using Microsoft products with it---you should be able to
write your own software to use the same APIs that Microsoft products are
using to access the Terminologies Service.
An example of the sort of thing I would see using the Terminologies
Service for would be query expansion/enhancment. A user enters a
query----the software, behind the scenes takes some words from his
query, and searches the Terminologies Service to find controlled
vocabulary terms which have "used for" and/or notes/description fields
including the user's terms. These terms are then suggested to the
user---or automatically added to the user's query.
Obviously, this would be more useful if the Terminologies Service
included controlled vocabularies more likely to be found in many library
catalogs: LCSH, LCC, and Dewey. But it might be useful even with what
it has now, not sure. If the Terminologies Service included Conspectus
and LCC, and returned metadata including what cross-vocabulary
connections OCLC has calculated (ie, the Dewey->LCC correspondences
displayed in ClassificationWeb), then it would be useful for what the
original questioner asked.
Jonathan
Houghton,Andrew wrote:
>> 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.
>
>
--
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886
rochkind (at) jhu.edu
Received on Mon Feb 04 2008 - 11:02:36 EST