Cloud Computing – Library Technology Launchpad

Library Technology at the ALA 2019 Annual Conference

The ALA 2019 Annual Conference is just days away. The conference covers a myriad of library topics and sorting through the program sessions to find the ones focused on library technology takes effort. Let us do the work for you.

Here is our list of programs related to library technology. You’ll find interest groups and sessions on data and metadata, Linked Data, FOLIO, ILS and LMS, websites, mobile apps, NISO standards, UX, emerging technologies, and more. Committee meetings were not included. Sessions are located at the Washington Convention Center unless otherwise noted.

For official descriptions, speakers, and final schedule, please check the conference Full Schedule page.

Library Service Status Pages

Online library services play a vital part in providing access to library resources and services. Thus, it is very useful for library staff to know the status of these third-party services. Downtime is rare, but when staff and users need to know the availability of online services, having a library service status page can be extremely helpful. Fortunately, library vendors know this and increasingly are providing access to websites for displaying current service status and notices of planned interruptions.

Here is a list of the known major library service status pages:

bepress

bepress Current Status bepress supports institutional repositories with Digital Commons, SelectedWorks, Expert Gallery Suite, and ExpressO online manuscript delivery service. Their website has a Current Status page that covers all of these services including status details, scheduled maintenance, and recent product updates.

Access the bepress Current Status page.

EBSCO

EBSCO Help Alerts

On its EBSCO Help website, the company provides News and Alerts for its wide range of databases and EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS). You can enter your email address to subscribe to alerts, as well.

Access the EBSCO Help Alerts page.

Ex Libris

Ex Libris System Status

With the merger of Ex Libris and ProQuest, Ex Libris took over the support of all library systems and discovery services. The company has created a unified system status page for Alma, Summon, Serials Solutions 360 Link, Intota, Primo, SFX, and more.

Access the Ex Libris System Status page.

OCLC

From the OCLC Support & Training website, you can access OCLC System Alerts. This blog-like site reports current and past maintenance and issues for services including Connexion, hosted EZproxy, WorldCat, and WorldShare products.

Access the OCLC System Alerts page.

SirsiDynix

SirsiDynix Status

SirsiDynix is a major library vendor with cloud-based systems such as their BLUEcloud services. The company’s status page contains notifications of scheduled maintenance and outages by region.

Access the SirsiDynix Status page.

Springshare

Springshare understands the importance of providing status information for library resources and services to library users. That’s why they created the Systems Status Dashboard in LibAnswers that allows your library to set up and display the status of your website, LibGuides, local resources, and databases. You can alert users to any planned system maintenance and explain unexpected downtime. For any LibAnswers site that has enabled the public status dashboard, you can view it by adding /systems after their LibAnswers URL. Some examples are Manchester Metropolitan University, the University of Maryland Libraries, and Georgia College.

Read more about the Springshare Systems Status Dashboard.

In addition to bookmarking the above sites, follow your important library vendors on Twitter. That is where they will often post the first announcements of issues and further status reports.

Basics and Resources Series 2016

Last year we created a Basics and Resources series to introduce some common library technology topics. As you can guess from the name, in each article we introduced the basic concepts and listed resources where you could learn more. Based on feedback, these articles proved very popular and we will be posting more in the coming year.

The Basics and Resources articles from 2016 were:

Linked Data

Linked Data mug Linked Data is a set of practices which involves the publishing, sharing, and connecting of related data across the Web in a structured format, preferably using an open access license.

Read Linked Data: Basics and Resources.

BIBFRAME

BIBFRAME is a bibliographic framework for the description of physical and online objects to make them accessible on the Web by using a standard Linked Data model. It is a replacement for MARC.

Read BIBFRAME: Basics and Resources.

Altmetrics

Altmetrics are “alternative metrics” to measure the influence and reach of scholarly output on the Web through peer-review counts, influential news sites and blog posts, citation manager bookmarks such as Mendeley, Wikipedia citations, and social media mentions on sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

Read Altmetrics: Basics and Resources.

API

API stands for Application Programming Interface which allows external applications to access software or Web services data, in the latter case by using HTTP request messages, for recombination (mashup) or custom presentation by the external application.

Read API: Basics and Resources.

We will keep a current list on the Basics and Resources Series page.

API: Basics and Resources

Why use APIs?

Application programming interfaces essentially allow programs and online services to talk to each other. APIs provide a set of definitions and protocols for services to request and exchange data. Many library vendors provide public and key-based APIs to their services in order to allow customers to pull bibliographic and other data into local systems and websites.

The Basics

For our purposes, we’ll only look at Web APIs.

Web services and applications exchange data through APIs using a request and response system. The exchange uses HTTP and HTTPS (secure HTTP) like regular Web requests, however the data isn’t formatted for people to read but rather for other services. The data format is usually expressed in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) or Extensible Markup Language (XML).

API Graphic

Continue reading “API: Basics and Resources”

FOLIO: An Open Library Services Platform

Back in April you might remember the news that EBSCO was giving $1 million (or more) to help fund the development of a new open library services platform (LSP). American Libraries wrote about this on their blog post EBSCO Supports New Open Source Project. EBSCO has a Vice President of Open Source Platforms & Communities, Christopher Spalding, who is taking an active role in the project. At the time of EBSCO’s announcement the name of the project had not been announced.

At the Code4Lib 2016 Conference in March, Sebastian Hammer gave a talk on the state of the project at that time, still with no name. Watch his presentation: Constructive Disintegration — Re-imagining the Library Platform as Microservices. Some goals of the projet (from his slide) are:

Easy + fun to extend and customize

Apache 2 license: Everyone can play

Cloud-ready, multi-tenant, built around an open knowledge base, linked data, electronic and print resource management

Can be hosted by commercial vendors, library networks, or locally

Community-based

Modular — snap-in modules (apps) can be contributed by libraries or vendors.

During the ALA 2016 Annual Conference the FOLIO project was announced.

FOLIO FOLIO stands for the Future of Libraries is Open. It is currently a software platform to be used as a starting point to build library services. Consider FOLIO as a “cloud-based operating system” for applications.

The project is being led by the Denmark-based company Index Data headed by Sebastian Hammer (a panelist at the ALA 2016 Annual Conference) and the Open Library Environment (OLE) directed by Michael Winkler. The main source of funding comes from EBSCO. The Open Library Foundation, a nonprofit oversight organization, was set up to direct the project.

Index Data will be responsible for building the core platform which will be released as open source software under an Apache version 2.0 license. The FOLIO platform software can be downloaded and installed locally or hosted on cloud-based servers from library vendors such as EBSCO, SirsiDynix, and ByWater Solutions. Index Data intends to make the platform “as little as possible” and not create obstacles to development.

Read the FOLIO press release: Introducing FOLIO – A new collaboration bringing libraries, service providers and developers together to speed innovation and redefine the future of library automation (June 24, 2016).

On top of the FOLIO platform, developers from library vendors, organizations, and member institutions will build modules, applications, and services. Apps will include traditional ILS service modules such as Acquisitions, Cataloging, and Circulation. We should eventually see LMS functionality including electronic resource management, OPAC, data conversion, and resource sharing. Native Linked Data output is not in the works but it is expected that this model will be supported.

Developers of existing library services can choose to port their applications to FOLIO or simply build integration points to their current systems. The FOLIO platform should make software with open APIs even more attractive to users.

In August, Index Data will release prototype code on GitHub. Developers can then turn their attention to building microservices. Note that although the FOLIO platform itself is open source and free, some of the premium apps built to run on it might be created and sold by library vendors.

FOLIO can also be thought of as a community of institutions and vendors working together. There are many ways to interact and get involved with the FOLIO community:

FOLIO Website – News updates at www.folio.org/news.

OLE Website – Blog posts at www.openlibraryenvironment.org.

Email Lists – Subscribe and archives at lists.openlibraryfoundation.org.

FOLIO on Twitter – @FOLIO_LSP

OLE on Twitter – @ole_community

FOLIO Forum on Twitter – #FOLIOForum

We will certainly be following this project and bringing you more information as the platform launches and develops.