The Digital Library Federation ILS and Discovery Systems Working Group has a new draft of their Technical Recommendation available on their web site, that has been changed in response to what they term as the Berkeley Accord. The Berkeley meeting was attended by representatives from a number of library systems vendors as well as the working group and other invitees. "At the meeting," the announcement of the accord states, "participants agreed to support a set of essential functions through open protocols and technologies by deploying specific recommended standards" relating to harvesting of data from an ILS, querying availability information, and the ability to create a "stable link" to items in the ILS. Signatories included representatives from most major ILS vendors as well as other organizations.
Anyone interested in integrated library system interoperability, and especially vendors of such systems, should be tracking this work. Comments on this (likely final) draft are solicited through May 9, which really only provides two weeks to digest and respond. I wouldn’t let the moss grow on you if you think this is important.
About Roy Tennant
