>> In point of fact if all libraries dumped their catalogs to linked
>> data, some xml files, those files could be crawled by various
>> services and in various ways they could link up the data to point
>> someone to the library's holdings...
>
> The question is how this would actually be accomplished. Most
> libraries don't have this kind of expertise on hand, and even if
> they did, providing this service locally is more expensive than
> most people are willing to admit.
I beg to differ; it is trivial to dump and expose one's bibliographic records to the Web.
Any ILS worth its weight in salt has an export function. To expose one's records the under-the-hood process is the same from ILS to ILS:
1. find all records
2. dump as MARC
3. move the result to an HTTP server
4. share the URL
The resulting file will be surprisingly small for most libraries. Given the URL, others could get the MARC and do stuff with it. Converting the MARC into XML or some other format is icing on the cake but not necessary. Just getting it out there is a step in the sharing direction.
--
Eric Lease Morgan
Head, Digital Access and Information Architecture Department
Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame
(574) 631-8604
Received on Tue Mar 09 2010 - 11:35:02 EST