Integrated Library Systems -Discovery Interface (ILS-DI): A Standard Framework for real-time connectivity with Information Discovery Applications

Abstract

A library service's primary purpose is to meet library users' information needs to facilitate theirresearch, make them more educated, empower them, and fulfill their information thirsty. As adiscovery tool, a union catalog can allow end-users to learn about an item's location, availability,rapid information retrieval, multiple source search interface, etc. To date, most national andinternational union catalogs can only find a catalog purpose and lack other features. They lackreal-time availability status, placement holds, renewal, request for articles, use of ILSauthentication credentials, and expanded search features such as full-text search, facetednavigation, and resource grouping. The purpose of this paper is to solve this problem through thestandard protocol Integrated Library System–Discovery Interface (ILS–DI) by using Koha ILS atthe backend and the front-end VuFind discovery system. The developed framework was builtwith three-layer architecture with Koha ILS as a data provider, Open Archives MetadataHarvesting Protocol (OAI-PMH) as data collection protocol, and VuFind as discovery layer. AKohaILS-DI protocol designed in particular for a multi-backend driver to interlink Online PublicAccess Catalogue (OPAC) and ILS functionalities with VuFind discovery layer. The studysuggests that the framework can act as an information discovery prototype to help the entirelibrary community access the information quickly in a comprehensive way comprehensively.Also, strongly recommended implementation of ILS-DI based discovery applications inuniversities and academic libraries will increase organizations' expectations and attract theirusers with better quality services.