[Web4lib] Developer collaboration leads to implementation of NCIP 2.0

[Roy Tennant]

Posted on behalf of Karen Coombs.
Roy

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Early this spring, a community of library developers interested in
interoperability between discovery interfaces and integrated library systems
formed a working group to build on the work of the DLF ILS-DI Task force.
After several months of collaboration between this developer community and
OCLC team members, we are excited to announce our plans to contribute an
implementation of version 2.0 of the NCIP standard, derived from the OCLC
Web-scale Management Services codebase, to the eXtensible Catalog¹s
open-source NCIP Toolkit. This contribution will advance the library
community¹s efforts to simplify interoperability options for any library or
software provider that wishes to include item availability and other
information from the integrated library system in its discovery interface
display.

With the contribution of this open-source code, OCLC will help to extend the
great work of the eXtensible Catalog (XC) development group with support for
NCIP 2.0.  The first contribution, expected this month, will support the
NCIP Lookup Item service, which was determined to be the highest priority
for the ILS-DI Task Force.  Support for this message enables libraries to
retrieve item status from their ILS in real time, making it possible for
third-party discovery interfaces such as the eXtensible Catalog, VuFind and
WorldCat Local to incorporate this in their displays to patrons.   Following
this initial release, OCLC will work in conjunction with the Task Force
members to establish a project plan to expand both the number of supported
NCIP 2.0 services and ILS connection components.

The software will be licensed under the MIT License, which allows for
commercial reuse.

To learn more about this contribution, please contact Randall Cook of the
eXtensible Catalog project (rcook at library.rochester.edu) or Karen A. Coombs,
Product Manager for the OCLC Developer Network (coombsk at oclc.org).

Karen


-- 
Karen A. Coombs
Product Manager
OCLC Developer Network
coombsk at oclc.org
281-886-0882
Skype:librarywebchic