DLF Executive Director, Peter Brantley has published a document laying out ILS Basic Discovery API principles. 

In the summer of 2007, the Digital Library Federation (DLF) convened a working group, the ILS Discovery Interface Task Force, to analyze the issues involved in achieving effective interoperation between traditional integrated library systems (ILS’s) and internet discovery applications, and to work towards a technical proposal as a solution.

Below is a document (aka the "Berkeley Accord") that the ILS Discovery Task Force adopted in concert with the undersigned vendors as a statement in support of achieving functional integration of discovery and data.

ILS Basic Discovery Interfaces: A proposal for the ILS community.

On March 6, representatives of the Digital Library Federation (DLF), academic libraries, and major library application vendors met in Berkeley, California to discuss a draft recommendation from the DLF for standard interfaces for integrating the data and services of the Integrated Library System (ILS) with new applications supporting user discovery. Such standard interfaces will allow libraries to deploy new discovery services to meet ever-growing user expectations in the Web 2.0 era, take full advantage of advanced ILS data management and services, and encourage a strong, innovative community and marketplace in next-generation library management and discovery applications.

At the meeting, participants agreed to support a set of essential functions through open protocols and technologies by deploying specific recommended standards.

These functions are:

1. Harvesting. Functions to harvest data records for library collections, both in full, and incrementally based on recent changes. Harvesting options could include either the core bibliographic records, or those records combined with supplementary information (such as holdings or summary circulation data). Both full and differential harvesting options are expected to be supported through an OAI-PMH interface.

2. Availability. Real-time querying of the availability of a bibliographic (or circulating) item. This functionality will be implemented through a simple REST interface to be specified by the ILS-DI task group.

3. Linking. Linking in a stable manner to any item in an OPAC in a way that allows services to be invoked on it; for example, by a stable link to a page displaying the item’s catalog record and providing links for requests for that item. This functionality will be implemented through a URL template defined for the OPAC as specified by the ILS-DI task group.

Next steps:

The DLF ILS-Discovery Interface (ILS-DI) committee will prepare a recommendation with a new interoperability profile, "ILS Basic Discovery Interfaces" or "ILS-BDI", that includes the functions above, along with specifications of the proposed technologies (or "bindings", in the language of the recommendation).

ILS and application developers and vendors will support the ILS-BDI using the recommended bindings in future products.

The DLF will publicize these recommendations, and encourage further enhancements and cooperation between libraries, vendors, and applications developers in building more advanced, interoperable architectures for bibliographic discovery and use.

We are all committed to providing the best library services for research and learning. The agreement we are making now is an important step in advancing these services for the library users of today and tomorrow.

- Digital Library Federation, March 2008

Undersigned by:

1. Talis
2. Ex Libris
3. LibLime
4. BiblioCommons
5. SirsiDynix
6. Polaris Library Systems
7. VTLS
8. California Digital Library
9. OCLC
10. AquaBrowser

Abstention:

           Innovative Interfaces, Inc.

An agreement to support standardised API definition from this wide group is a significant step forward in an area where libraries have been pushing for movement for a long time. 

The DLF must be congratulated for driving this initiative forward thus far.  Let’s hope this atmosphere of open agreement continues through the ILS-BDI into actual developments and availability of APIs that libraries can use on their systems.

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