NCSU CatalogWS API - DLF Fall Forum 2007 - Nov. 6, 2007

Very interesting presentation by NCSU on their CatalogWS Web Services API they have build on top of their Endeca layer.

Here are my raw notes

Library Catalog as Versatile Discovery Platform

UPDATE 2007-11-08: [PRESENTATION] ENDUPDATE

Next Generation Catalogs

Library Technology Reports - Next Generation Library Catalogs

Examples
* Endeca (NCSU Libraries)
* AquaBrowser
* Encore (UQueensland)
* ExLibris Primo
* WorldCat Local
* Solr (UVirginia Project Blacklight)
* vufind (also Solr powered)

Modern search
- relevance
- faceted
- tag clouds
New content
- user contributed content
? enriched content
? content or context awareness?

Focused on optimizing a single discovery context... the OPAC

Question

Why should the discovery of catalogued library collections be limited to user interaction
with a single catalog application?

Catalog as Discovery Platform, beyond the OPAC

Web Services: CatalogWS API

Platform

"a platform is a system that can be reprogrammed and therefore customized by outside developers..."

- quote from Marc Andreesssen

Discovery Happens Elsewhere

"No single website is the sole focus of a user's attention."

- quaote from Lorcan Dempsey

Platform Motivation

* move beyond the one-size0-fits all approach
make it easer to reuse and repurpose catalogue data outside the opac
* build catalog interaces optimised for different use contexts

CatalogWS API

Goals
- can we have RSS feeds for the catalogue
- can we integrate catalog results into library website quick search

Final result
* rich API

[diagram of architecture]

API implemented as layer on top of Endeca

Limitations
- subset of catalog data
- read-only
- not real-time

Technical Design
- RESTful
- Java, Tomcat, XOM, Saxon 8.8, JSON

http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/catalog/ws/

* discovery-oriented
* catalog availability (known item lookup isbn)
* catalog search (both known and exploratory searching)

can pass a style parameter (URL of XSL), for server-side XML transformation, or XML to XHTML

Why new XML schema?
- include as much of data as possible in reponse
- MARC XML and MODS didn't appear capable of capturing the varied data
- XML response includes links

Demo of Current CatalogWS Apps

* integration with external apps
- Quick Search (NCSU library website search)
- iGoogle Widget

* alternative catalog interfaces
- mobiLIB catalog
- facetbrowser

Collection Promotion
- FacetBrowser - ability to easily create blog entries for selected items
- automatically generated "bookwalls"
- RSS feeds for new titles

http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/dli/projects/catalogwsapps/