Re: Open Catalog APIs was: opac live search

From: Till Kinstler <kinstler_at_nyob>
Date: Mon, 9 Mar 2009 11:50:38 +0100
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Adrian Pohl schrieb:

> Thanks for the hint. But obviously this is not a search API. You first
> have to retrieve the record-number with a seperate catalog-search to get
> the data you want, don't you? 

There are a lot of library data silos that offer "technical open" search 
APIs, mostly plain old Z39.50 (for a directory of Z39.50 interfaces, see 
e.g. http://targettest.indexdata.com/).
We (GBV) offer Z39.50 as well (s. 
http://www.gbv.de/vgm/info/benutzer/04extras/extras_0065?lang=en) for 
our central databases and local systems. Additionaly we have (somewhat 
buggy) SRU, OAI (on request for subsets of our collections, due to 
technical limitations we can't offer open OAI for everything) and are 
just implementing unAPI. But we (and most of these other "technical 
open" library data sources) still lack a usage policy for that data. So 
I don't promote using these interfaces for anything beyond importing 
records into personal reference managing software and things like that.
A (as I feel, pretty open) policy is on its way for our data, but it 
will take some time to get it settled, because there are a lot of 
parties involved in a big library network like ours.

> Isn't that a way to increase the importance of catalogs and get
> them connected to the web?

It is. But attention for such issues is just evolving and takes time to 
develop...

Regards,
Till

-- 
Till Kinstler
Verbundzentrale des Gemeinsamen Bibliotheksverbundes (VZG)
Platz der Göttinger Sieben 1, D 37073 Göttingen
kinstler@gbv.de, +49 (0) 551 39-13431, http://www.gbv.de
Received on Mon Mar 09 2009 - 06:52:03 EDT