A couple of weeks back I commented about the release of AquaBrowser Online OPAC software as a service - OaaS as I dubbed it - from the Dutch company Medialab.

At the time I mused: “So let the guys from AquaBrowser Online have access to index your catalog, and you can have a new whizzo OPAC interface for as little as $99/month. All without having to jump through all the usual hoops of justifying the purchase of hardware and software to run it on.“

Of course anyone with any history in the library domain will know a simple phrase like “So let the guys from AquaBrowser Online have access to index your catalog“, will often have far from simple ramifications in practice. Where is your data?; which vendor’s library system is it stored in?; what format can it be exported in?; how do I get through your firewall? - These are all questions that come to mind.

Ah, but hang on a moment - The Talis Platform, that open set of APIs the vision for which is:

“Library data made visible in any number of contexts, inside and outside the library, ultimately benefiting current and potential users of library services wherever they are.”

Shouldn’t that hide the complexity of integrating with dissimilar library systems, making life easier for people like AquaBrowser? Well of course it should, and it does.

Those of you sitting watching Paul Miller’s presentation at Access 2006 in Ottawa - “Engaged and Engaging: Transforming Libraries the Library 2.0 Way” whilst I’m posting this, or those who have spotted a very recent press release on the talis.com site, will know that I am not unique in having those thoughts.

The press release announces that:

Both Talis and Medialab have been driving technical and business innovation to help libraries expose their data silos, to easily integrate disparate systems and deliver next generation solutions that are rich, engaging, participative and economically attractive. Talis is developing an open software platform and Medialab has introduced AquaBrowser Online which is one of the first ‘software as a service’ applications to be available to the global library market. The agreement enables Medialab to take advantage of the platform’s APIs to enable any library that contributes its catalogue to the Talis Platform can take advantage of the AquaBrowser Online service.

Press releases are all well and good, but you can’t beat seeing and playing with the real thing. Well you won’t be disappointed on that score either. Two Libraries who contribute their holdings to the Talis Platform, Islington Libraries in London and Clare County Library in County Clare, Ireland, have agreed to take part in a trial of using their holdings data from within the Talis Platform to drive an AquaBrowser Online view of their catalogue. See it for yourself, here Islington and here County Clare.

There are a few wrinkles to be ironed out in the implementations, but what you see is what appeared immediately upon introducing the Platform data for those libraries in to the AquaBrowser Online service. A pretty impressive testament as to how things just become so much easier when you approach software as a service, and data in an open accessible way.

As I said last month When you approach things in a different way things just start dropping in to place.

(Waiter photo taken by vanillasky displayed in Flickr - added to by Richard Wallis)

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