Enriching the local catalog with bibliographic data exposed online: interaction with the national catalog via web services

Enriching the local catalog with bibliographic data exposed online: interaction with the national catalog via web services

Interoperability efforts represent a significant part within the fieldwork of documentary engineering. The enhancement of its catalog is one of its primary objectives. From that preoccupation came the idea of using a web service of the ABES in order to offer a functionality such as “Get more information about this author” accessible from a view on the authority record, usable during the consultation of the OPAC. This web service brings back directly pieces of information coming from IdRef, the authority database reference of the SUDOC and displays the abbreviated forms of the different records linked to a given authority, classified by relator code. The response in XML or in JSON is elaborated in order to be in compliance with the graphic charter of the ILS and to not create any disruption through the chain of information. A general problematic assumption shows the high stakes and the context in which this web service was imagined and designed. A global expertise of the general outline of the ABES network is useful when trying to understand this functionality; the collaborative structure is briefly described. The articulation between the local and the national bases is made possible with the mediation of a PHP script whose major steps are detailed. Finally, as this project is aimed at being an experiment to reach further and operate other interactions of this kind, it is also important to apprehend the perspectives for the future that such new methods of accessing information can open. The implementation of this functionality has contributed to explore and stabilize new methods of project developments, but also to question the opening of the catalog on the universe of knowledge and to its potential use as a discovery tool. It questions again the interdependence between the local catalog and the SUDOC and has the virtue to set the issues according to a user-centered design.