Implementation Group

Overview
The NCIP Implementation Group (NCIP-IG) is charged with facilitating communication among implementers of the NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP). The group hosts a listserv, holds regular conference calls, and meets in person twice yearly.

Purpose, Structure, and Procedures of the Implementation Group


Table of Contents


As agreed at Oct. 2-4, 2002 Inaugural meeting in Denver (and modified April 14-16, 2009), the purpose of the NCIP Implementation Group is to:

Back to top


Inaugural Meeting

Attendees

Observers

Actions

Back to top


Procedures

Back to top

Implementation Group Members

Overview
Membership is open to organizations interested in and participating in the development of the NCIP standard. Membership is subject to the NISO Policies and Procedures governing committees (Section 2). Each member organization is alloted one vote and may designate a primary and a seconday representative. (In the list below, the primary representative is listed first.) To become a member of NCIP-IG, an organization should contact the Chair, Gail Wanner.

Current Members

Conference Calls

The NCIP-IG generally holds a conference call on the third Thursday of each month at 1:00 pm Eastern (US). The calls are open to anyone interested in NCIP.

Phone number: 877-375-2160
Participant Code: 85359792

The call schedule for 2010 is:

January 28 (special date - not the 3rd Thursday)
February 18
March 18
April 15
May 20
June 17
July 15
August 19
September 16
October 21
November 18
December 16

Minutes from prior calls:

November 2009 - present

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

Monday, Dec. 12, 2005

NCIP-IG Conference Call Minutes

December 12, 2005

Attendees:

Colorado State Library – Brenda Bailey-Hainer (Chair), Steve Gregory, and Steve Wrede
EnvisionWare, Inc – Rob Walsh
Ex Libris (USA) Inc – Randy Menakes and Ted Koppel
Fretwell Downing, Inc. – Ed Davidson and John Bodfish
Overdrive, Inc. – Russ Fuller
Polaris Library Systems – Candy Zemon and Robert Gray
The call was hosted by Ex Libris (USA) Inc.

Randy Menakes announced that Ted Koppel will be taking over as the Ex Libris representative to the NCIP-IG since responsibility for standards is moving internally to the Product Management area. The group thanked Randy for his participation and contributions over the years, and welcomed Ted’s return.

1. Date and location of the Spring 2006 meeting

Menakes and Koppel provided details on the location of the Ex Libris office in Newton, MA, travel logistics, and nearby features including the Sheraton immediately across the street from the Ex Libris office. Bailey-Hainer explained the logic of scheduling the meeting to precede the PLA 2006 conference meeting in Boston. Besides the possibility of reducing travel expenses for those attending PLA anyway, it is hoped that there may be opportunity to include some PLA attendees at the NCIP-IG meeting.
The group agreed that the next meeting would be scheduled for March 20 and 21, 2006 with Ex Libris as the sponsor. The meeting will be held either at the Ex Libris office in Newton, MA or the nearby Newton Sheraton. The Circulation Policy Exchange sub-group will meet the morning of March 22.

2. Marketing update

Zemon reported that based on the success of the NCIP presentation at the Oct 2005 LITA conference that another presentation for the Oct 2006 LITA conference in Nashville was being considered.
Proposals are due December 15, 2005. The proposal and presentation for 2006 need to be different than that for the Oct 2005 presentation in order to be accepted. It was agreed that applications for NCIP in areas outside of circulation and traditional library services should be considered for the proposal. These would include e-commerce, circ/ILL, the gathering of circulation statistics, self-charge, and e-books. The goal would be to demonstrate the breadth of NCIP.

Koppel agreed to write a draft proposal and distribute it to the marketing subgroup for comment, and to submit the proposal by the December 15 deadline. Others in the group (Walsh, Fuller, and Davidson) agreed to investigate potential topics and customers for consideration as part of the presentation.

Bailey-Hainer has been invited to speak on the topic of the use and implementation of current standards for resource sharing at a RUSA section program during summer 2006 ALA called "Global Resource Sharing Standards: Interoperability or Impasse?" This will be an opportunity to promote the use of NCIP to another audience.

3. Report from the NCIP-IG discussion on filling the ISO ILL void

Davidson reported on the meeting that was held immediately following the last NCIP IG meeting on October 4, 2005, in San Jose. The group once again expressed the difficulties in not having information on the status of version 3 of the ISO ILL standard and the needs of the overall ILL community. Davidson will attempt to gather information on the current status of ISO ILL version 3, and make a suggestion that members of the IPIG group meet during ALA midwinter.
4. Road Map to NCIP supporting documents

The revised document on Enumerated Types posted to the listserv by Walsh on Nov 10, 2005 was discussed. The document was approved for inclusion to the overall Road Map.
The document on NCIP's Data Dictionary posted to the listserv by Dill on Dec 5 was discussed. Bodfish reported that he had questions on the topic of schema versus DTD that had not been posted to the entire listserv. Bodfish will post his questions to the listserv to generate discussion.

The group also discussed the need for a final editorial group to be created to review all of the documents in the Road Map once the remaining supporting documents are created and approved.

The need to include some sample message dumps as part of the explanation of protocol transfer was discussed. Grey will post some raw XML samples as TCP examples.

Koppel asked that discussion on the Road Map be included at the next meeting.

The Maintenance Agency will post the Road Map on the website as a draft document.

5. Application Profile Template

Davidson reported that he successfully used the new Template in revising his Application Profile.
The group approved the Template and noted Menakes' contributions to this document.

The Maintenance Agency will post the revised Application Profile Template to the website in an appropriate area since it is a non-normative section of the protocol and will contact NISO to have them point to this updated template.

Bodfish will include a reference to the updated template in the general Road Map to NCIP document.

6. Harmonization between CIRC and ILL

Davidson briefly reviewed his document that was posted to the listserv on Oct 3, 2005. The document identifies services common to both the DCB and C/ILL profiles, and compares the corresponding data elements used in the profiles.
It was noted that this document should be used for the next generation of DCB and C/ILL profiles or in the creation of new application profiles.

The Maintenance Agency will post this as an information document to the website.

7. Next phone call

Scheduled for Thursday, February 2, 2006 at 10am MST. Davidson will confirm that Fretwell-Downing will sponsor this call.

8. Time ran out before the action items from the Oct. 3-4, 2005 meeting could be reviewed. Wrede will post the outstanding action items to the listserv.

Thursday, Apr. 14, 2005

NCIP IG Conference Phone Call – April 14, 2005

Attendees

  • Colorado State Library: Steve Gregory, Steve Wrede
  • Dynix: Gail Wanner, Shelley Neville
  • EnvisionWare, Inc.: Rob Walsh
  • ExLibris (USA) Inc.: Randy Menakes
  • GIS Information Systems: Candy Zemon
  • Innovative Interfaces Inc.: Jason Boland
  • Sirsi Corporation: Mark Needleman
  • VTLS Inc.: Scott Mayberry

Wrede took roll call and reviewed the agenda topics. The topic of Proposal for Informational Message as posted to the listserv by Needleman was added to the agenda.

Preparation for NCIP presentation at the LITA National Conference this fall - Wanner noted that presenters for DCB and Self-Service applications have been established. The original presenter for CRC/ILL application is not available. Davidson at FDI has been asked to determine if he could provide a presenter for this application.

If none can be identified a possible fall back would to include Bindery Service or Reciprocal Borrowing applications.

ACTION ITEMS

  • Needleman to contact possible presenter to represent the Bindery Service application.
  • Wanner and Neville to do the same on Reciprocal Borrowing.
  • Wanner to assure that forms are completed and sent into LITA to meet the deadlines.

As a side conversation it was noted that Ted Koppel will no longer an active member of NCIP IG, and he has several contacts among EBook vendors regarding the use of NCIP.

Zemon noted that GIS is developing business partnership with several of the EBook vendors.

Wrede offered to contact Koppel to get a list of contacts within the EBook community and any background information.

Patron Authentication and Patron Inquiry - Gregory reviewed the two profiles – Patron Authentication and Basic Patron Authentication - that were posted to the listserv with the suggestions and revisions from the March meeting.

The group agreed that these profiles can be used as the basis for creating the wider Patron Inquiry application. Wanner will begin work with her group in this area.

The profiles as distributed have been approved and will be posted to the NCIP website.

Bindery Profile - Needleman noted that the information distributed to the listserv was a description of the messages used in creating a specific application for SF-System bindery product.

The question if there was really a need for a full Bindery Application at this time was raised and discussed.

It was determined at this point that there may not be a need for a full Bindery Application, but some additional documentation describing the specification application with SF-System is needed.

ACTION ITEM

  • Needleman will revise and expand his original message posted to listerv and distribute to Mayberry for additional comments. The expanded information to be posted to the listserv in time for the June 9 conference call.
  • Other members of NCIP IG should review this documentation in context of their own bindery partners.

Proposal for Informational Message - Needleman reviewed the message distributed to the listserv, which grew out the discussions at the March NCIP IG meeting. Needleman noted that discussion needs to be held on how it would be incorporated into the DTD.

ACTION ITEM

  • Needleman to resubmit his message to the listeserv to encourage more discussion, and topic will be included as part of May 12, conference call.

Roadmap to NCIP - Discussion was tabled since John Bodfish was unavailable to participate in the call. We anticipate a revision by Bodfish posted to the listserv in the near future. The topic will be included as a topic for the May 12, conference call.

Logistics and location of October NCIP IG meeting - Boland confirmed that III will sponsor this meeting. It will not be held at III headquarters, but at an appropriate space nearby. This meeting will be on October 3 and 4th following the LITA National Forum in San Jose. The NCIP Circulation Policy Exchange group will meet the morning of October 5.

Next Phone Call - Thursday, May 12, 2005 at 9am Pacific, 10am Mountain, 11am Central, and noon Eastern.

Agenda topics and call details to be posted a week before the call.

Thursday, Aug. 11, 2005

NCIP IG Conference Call

August 11, 2005

The call was sponsored by SirsiDynix.

Organizations and individuals participating in the call were-

  • Colorado State Library: Steve Wrede, Brenda Bailey-Hainer (Chair)
  • EnvisionWare Inc.: Rob Walsh
  • Fretwell-Downing Inc: Ed Davidson
  • Innovative Interfaces Inc: Jason Boland
  • Polaris Library Systems: Robert Gray
  • SirsiDynix: Mark Needleman
  • ExLibris: Randy Menakes
  • Overdrive, Inc.: Russ Fuller
  • Relais International: Kevin Stewart
  • LibLime: Joshua Ferraro
  • OCLC: Tony O’Brien

The agenda topics were discussed and agreed upon.

Planning/Logistics for the next NCIP IG meeting – III has reserved a meeting space at the San Jose Marriott Hotel for the 3rd and 4th. The Marriott is also the conference hotel for the LITA forum immediately preceding the NCIP IG meeting. There will not be any follow up meeting with IPIG. The NCIP CPE group will meet the morning of October 5th, at a location in the Marriott to be determined. Wrede has been working with staff at III to set logistics.

Action Item

  • Wrede will contact III and or Marriott to establish hotel registration information and distribute via the website and listserv.

RoadMap to NCIP – After the June conference call John Bodfish posted a revised version of the document and identified supporting documents that required other volunteers from with NCIP IG to complete. Davidson noted that at this point only one person as volunteered to work on the supporting documents. Bailey-Hainer noted that the goal is to have the final version of the document prepared to be approved at the October meeting.

Action Items

  • Bodfish will resend the document and the summary of other needed documents to the listserv.
  • Other members are encouraged to volunteer in the creation of these documents
  • Bailey-Hainer and Wrede will continue to solicit review and comments from new members.

Follow up to questions posted on Example of temporary processing error – In discussion the consensus of the group was that the email reply posted on the listserv had resolved this question
Action Item

  • Wrede will confirm that the person who originally posted the question agrees that it has been adequately answered.

Follow up to Tony O’Brien’s inquiry on “How Widespread is NCIP today? - In addition to the replies posted on the listerv several other cases were noted in the phone call. Although very incomplete the summary of the responses from the email and phone call are

  • TLC- One installed library using the DCB: URSA application
  • PALCI- Reports five libraries using NCIP in the consortium. The DCB3 application profile has been used.
  • OCLC – Reports one installation for authentication for OCLC FirstSearch
  • SirsiDynix – Within the Sirsi division approximately 35 installations are reported, only as a responder and primarily with URSA.
  • III –Reports that implementation with Sirsi is in the initial stages. The Michigan State Library project will include 40-50 libraries. DCB is the model
  • Fretwell-Downing – Reports current testing with 3-4 vendors and one customer in alpha testing. CIRC/ILL is the model.
  • ExLibris – Currently testing as a responder with DCB as the model.

Bailey-Hainer noted that compiling a complete and detailed list of implementations is a goal for the NCIP presentation at the LITA forum.

Action Item

  • Bailey-Hainer will repost the question to the NCIP listserv.

Status updates on additional action items

  • Additional documentation on the work developed with SF Solutions Bindery - awaiting response from SF Solutions.
  • Harmonizing between CIRC and ILL - draft document needs additional response from subgroup members.
  • Redraft of proposal for Information Message – waiting available time in order for the original volunteers to address.
  • Proposal to test the concept of adding the ability of the NCIP client to inquire to the date that a user’s credentials will expire – awaiting available time in order for the original volunteers to address.

Next call – Sept 8 – 9am PDT, 10am MDT, 11am CDT, and noon EDT. Relais International will sponsor this call.

Thursday, Jun. 9, 2005

NCIP IG Conference Call - June 9, 2005

The call was sponsored by 3M.

Organizations and individuals participating in the call were

  • 3M: Sue Boettcher
  • Colorado State Library: Steve Gregory, Steve Wrede, Brenda Bailey-Hainer (Chair)
  • Dynix: Gail Wanner
  • EnvisionWare Inc.: Rob Walsh
  • Fretwell-Downing Inc.: Ed Davidson, John Bodfish
  • Innovative Interfaces Inc.: Jason Boland
  • Polaris Library Systems: Candy Zemon
  • Sirsi Corporation: Mark Needleman
  • VTLS Inc.: Scott Mayberry
  • Overdrive, Inc.: Russ Fuller
  • NetLibrary: Jim Daehn
  • LibLime: Joshua Ferraro

The agenda topics were discussed and agreed upon.

New members - The two newest members to NCIP-IG were acknowledged. The group welcomed Russ Fuller from Overdrive, Inc and Joshua Ferraro from LibLime.

Self Service Cancel Question – Originating from an email inquiry from Vince Johnston posted to the NCIP listserv on June 3. The group confirmed that this question has been resolved; that there is no need for an Undo Checkin and no additional action is required.

RoadMap to NCIP – The group acknowledged the work done by John Bodfish in creating this document. It was emphasized that the additional documents referred to in the RoadMap document are to be incorporated into the existing once they are created as opposed to being created as separate documents and links.

Action Items

  • Bodfish will list and summarize the other needed documents as a message to the listserv.
  • Other members are encouraged to volunteer in the creation of these documents

Bodfish will act as the coordinator for the creation and incorporation of the other needed documents.

Recruiting - Bailey-Hainer and Wrede will continue to solicit review and comments from new members.

Planning for the Oct 3-4 meeting in San Jose – Boland reported that plans remain for the meeting will be held San Jose Marriott, which is the same hotel for the LITA National Forum that immediately precedes the NCIP IG meeting.

The group confirmed that no special meeting space will be necessary for the CEP (Circulation Exchange Policy) meeting on the morning of Oct 5.

Collaborating with IPIG - Davidson reported that he recently approached Mary Jackson with the question of inviting IPIG to join this meeting. His inquiry was very recent and she has not had opportunity to reply yet.

Update on “Rethinking Resource Sharing” document and presentations - Wanner, Bailey-Hainer, and Zemon reported that the presentation at the April ILL Conference in Denver was very well received and generated a deal of interest. In addition the white paper is being distributed to the Canadian Library Association, a state-wide resource sharing meeting in Kansas, and an ILL conference in Australia. It was noted that Claire McKeigan of Realis, International has joined the signed on as a supporter of the white paper, and other interested parties are encouraged to join the group.

Several additional presentations in the near future include

  • Dynix Institute Web Seminar on June 14 - Wanner emphasized that this is not vendor related presentation and all are invited. Details are available at Dynix Institute
  • RUSA -STARS ILL DISCUSSION GROUP at the ALA Annual Meeting in Chicago. Date: June 26, 2005 Time: 8:30 AM- 12:00PM Location: Palmer House room: Monroe BR
  • OCLC Future of Resource Sharing at the ALA Meeting in Chicato – Date: June 24 Time:1:30 - 3:30 pm Location: Chicago Hilton and Towers, Lake Huron Room Note registration is closed!

Discussions with NISO - Bailey-Hainer reported on discussions with NISO and the Standards Development Committee. A great deal of interest has been generated and the initial discussions of a NISO Sponsored symposium including the ILL community and vendors for the fall of 2005 have started. More details will be distributed as they become available.

Patron Inquiry Profile Report – Wanner reported that the task force (Wanner, Zemon, Jung, and Walsh) have agreed that the recently adopted Patron Authentication Profile and the optional data elements included within provide the basic information needed on a user for a NCIP transaction. It was restated that NCIP IG has the overall goal of not creating additional profiles unless absolutely necessary, and this was one of the reasons for the task force’s decision.

Wanner stated that Dynix has a need for an extension to the Patron Authentication Profile to support the creation of a new user record in a partner’s local circulation system. Wanner has coined this as a Reciprocal Borrowing Profile/ Extension to the Patron Authentication Profile, and she will be creating a draft to distribute to the group for review and comment.

Action Items

  • Wanner to distribute her draft via the listserv for review and comment.
  • Other vendors with a need for this extension should contact Wanner for possible collaboration.

Harmonizing of Circ and ILL – Davidson reported that based on the discussion in Denver at the March meeting that a super set of common messages has been created.

Action Item

  • Davidson will develop a document describing the super set of common messages and distribute for review and comment via the listserv.

Item Collection - It was confirmed that Item Collection should be free text and the proposal made by Mayberry is in general widely supported. Next steps are to get formal approval and then address changes to the DTD in place.

Action items

  • Wrede will contact Mayberry concerning distributing the proposal for formal approval via the listserv.

Next call – July 14 – 9am PDT, 10am MDT, 11am CDT, and noon EDT.

Action items that originally were set for discussion in the timeframe of the June conference call that will be included as part of the agenda of the July, 14, call include

  • Supply a new scheme name /URI for new scheme to incorporate the proposal to add new location type. Boettcher (3M)
  • Create a proposal and post to listserv to test the concept of adding the ability of the NCIP client to inquire as to the date that a user’s credentials will expire. Bodfish (FDI) and O’Brien (OCLC)
  • Re-draft and post proposal for Information Message to include when it is appropriate and not appropriate. Needleman (Sirsi) with assistance of O’Brien (OCLC) and Bodfish (FDI) supplying additional wording on constraints
  • Create additional documentation related to the work that has been done with SF Solutions Bindery product using NCIP messaging. Needleman (Sirsi) and Mayberry (VTLS)

Thursday, May 12, 2005

NCIP IG Conference Call - May 12, 2005

The call was sponsored by Auto-Graphics, Inc.

Organizations and individuals participating in the call were

  • 3M: Sue Boettcher
  • Auto-Graphics: Eric Jung
  • Colorado State Library: Steve Gregory, Steve Wrede, Brenda Bailey-Hainer (Chair)
  • Dynix: Gail Wanner
  • Endeavor Information Systems: Jens Dill
  • EnvisionWare Inc.: Rob Walsh
  • ExLibris (USA): Randy Menakes
  • Fretwell-Downing Inc.: Ed Davidson, John Bodfish
  • Innovative Interfaces Inc.: Jason Boland
  • OCLC Inc.: Tony O’Brien
  • Polaris Library Systems: Robert Gray, Candy Zemon
  • Relais International Inc.: Kevin Stewart
  • Sirsi Corporation: Mark Needleman
  • VTLS Inc.: Scott Mayberry

The agenda topics distributed earlier were reviewed and no additions were made.

NCIP Presentation at LITA - Wanner reported that all the information for the NCIP presentation at the LITA National Forum in September has been assembled and turned into LITA. Thanks to all who worked to identify the presenters and get information together.

Next Meeting - Boland reported that III is negotiating with the San Jose Marriott for the next NCIP IG on October 3 and 4. This is the same hotel being used for the LITA National Forum. It was determined that the morning NCIP CEP meeting on Oct 5 will not require a special meeting space to be reserved at the hotel.

Bailey-Hainer raised the question if there should be some attempt to invite members of IPIG to the next NCIP IG meeting. There is a fair amount of overlap between the two groups. There is some concern that IPIG dormant at present but that some changes (the 13 digit ISBN for example) that will need to be addressed in the near future.

Action items

  • After discussion it was determined that Ed Davidson will contact Mary Jackson regarding inviting IPIG to the next NCIP IG meeting and the possibility of creating a joint meting around the same time. Avoiding conflicts with the NCIP CEP meeting and extending the whole meeting out an additional day needs to be considered.

Adding a new Location Type Scheme - The discussion was based on a posting to the NCIP listserv by Boettcher on March 24, 2005, and is to support sorting systems.

Discussions focused on the facts that

  • The proposal itself is widely supported by the members of NCIP IG
  • Adopting the proposal will require the registering of a new scheme
  • The process for registering and deprecating schemes has not been standardized

Action items

  • Boettcher will supply a new scheme/URI for the scheme including this proposal and post to the listserv
  • Bodfish will begin discussion on the registering and maintaining of schemes via the listserv.
  • The topic of registering and maintaining schemes will be included as an agenda item for the October meeting.

Proposal for Information Message - The discussion was based on a posting to the NCIP listserv by Needleman on April 14, 2005.

Discussion centered around included some constraints to better assure that a large number of messages outside the scope of NCIP would not be generated.

Action items

  • Bodfish and O’Brien to create some additional wording to include some protocol constraints
  • Needleman will re-draft proposal to include when the information message is appropriate and not appropriate.

User credentials to Expire - The second part of this proposal is to add the ability for the NCIP client to inquire as to the date that a user’s credentials will expire.

It was agreed that this should be a separate proposal from the Informational Message and that there is a need for an alternate method to encode the credentials to expire message.

Action items

  • Needleman and O’Brien to craft a proposal and post to listerv to test the concept of this message

Roadmap to NCIP - The discussion was based on the postings by Bodfish on April 5th and 6th and May 12th, and the points raised by Walsh on the listserv and at the March meeting.

During discussion it was determined that

  • The document should be as self-contained as possible with as few references to other documents as possible.
  • The focus of the document should be how to interpret format and syntax as opposed to actual continent.

Action items

  • Bailey-Hainer and Wrede will contact appropriate members to review and provide additional feedback on the document.

Item Collection Code/Classification - The discussion was based on the posting by Mayberry on April 20th.

During discussion it was determined that free text was preferred over a scheme.

Action items

  • Mayberry will proceed with the Item Element Type as free text and will begin to identify the areas in the protocol that it will need to be included.

Patron Inquiry - Action and discussion was tabled for this call.

Next call – June 9th – 9am PDT, 10am MDT, 11am CDT, and noon EDT. Call will be kindly sponsored by 3M.

2004

Monday, Dec. 13, 2004

NCIP Implementers Group Conference Call - Monday, December 13, 2005

Attendees

  • 3M -    Sue Boettcher
  • Colorado State Library – Steve Wrede and Steve Gregory
  • Colorado State Library – Brenda Bailey-Hainer (Chair)
  • ExLibris – Randy Menakes
  • Fretwell-Downing – John Bodfish
  • GIS Information Systems – Robert Gray and Candy Zemon
  • III – Jason Boland
  • OCLC- Tony O’Brien
  • Relais – Kevin Stewart
  • TLC- Ted Koppel

 
This call was sponsored by GIS Information Systems.
 
The Agenda for the call was discussed and was determined to be-
 
LITA Program Proposal
E-Book Update
NCIP promotion
Updates from Other Standards
Review of Action Items from October Meetings
Set future dates
 
LITA Program Proposal
 
Koppel reported that the proposal for a NCIP program at the 2005 LITA meeting was delivered to LITA on Friday, December 10.   The primary authors of the proposal have been Ted Koppel, Candy Zemon, Mark Needleman, and Gail Wanner.  The timeframe for an official decision and announcement by LITA will be mid-February.  If accepted, the program will need to be finalized and presenters assigned.  The 2005 LITA meeting is September 29 – Oct 1, 2005 in San Jose, CA. 
 
It was clarified that all NCIP IG participants are considered potential participants for the program.
 
E-Book Update
 
Koppel reported conversations and contact with a number of E-Book vendors on the possibility of using NCIP to report back usage statistics to the local ILS. 
Conversations have been held with

  • North American E Book Library (Australia)
  • Overdrive
  • netLibrary

 
A conference call is scheduled with netLibrary and others are invited to attend if interested.
Additional E-Book vendors to be contacted are

  • Baker and Taylor
  • Follett

 
At this point, the feedback from the E-Book vendors has been positive.
 
NCIP Promotion
 
Wanner reported that the NCIP 101 article is currently being edited by Library Journal, and is scheduled for publication in the January
issue of Library Journal netconnect.  This is the issue that will be distributed at the ALA mid-winter meeting. 
 
Bailey-Hainer noted that NCIP was included in the most recent NISO newsletter.
 
Koppel noted that in the next year to year and half that there will be increased interest in NCIP from the public library groups.  Spring of ’05 will be the time to seriously consider proposals for future ALA meetings. 
 
Wanner noted that the RUSA/STARS program planning meeting is the Monday of ALA mid-winter for 2005.  She will forward the email announcement.
 
Updates from Other Standards
 
Koppel reported on the Washington D.C. International Standards meeting in November.  Although the latest ILL standard –ISO 10160- was technically approved at this meeting, it was officially noted that most of the countries implementing the current standard voted against approval.  An independent third party will be assigned to assess the new standard and its implications for compatibility with the current standard.  This third party has not yet been assigned and the timeframe for their report would be 12 months after their assignment.
 
Serious discussions on the ISSN changes continue, but nothing is determined at this point.
 
Review of Action Items from October Meetings
 
The Policies Directory meeting held on October 20, in Ottawa was discussed.  At the time of this call, the minutes to this meeting had not yet been distributed to the whole listserv.    Some of the original participants of this group were not able to attend the October 20, meeting, and several first time participants did attend.  A Policy Directory meeting will be included in the March agenda and hopefully both set of attendees will be available.  The consensus is that a NCIP Policies Directory is not essential to NCIP implementation, but would greatly enhance implementation.  A re-examination of  ILL and circulation policies, schemas, and backgrounds is needed to determine the most effective direction. 
 
The list of possible consultants to contact concerning NCIP was discussed and Jim Barrentine was added to the list.  The goal of the initial contact is to make them aware of NCIP and its progress, the RFP Guidelines revised by the NCIP IG, and to determine the best forum to inform the consultant community.
 
All action items from the October meeting were acknowledged by the assigned parties available during the call.
 
Future Dates
 
Next conference call will be either February 8 or 9, with the final date/time to be determined via the listserv.
 
The next NCIP meeting will be held on March 7-9, 2005 in Denver.  The general meeting will be on March 7 and 8, with the 9th reserved for the NCIP Policies Directory meeting.  The exact location will be announced soon.

Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2004

NCIP-IG Conference Phone Call – Sept 9, 2004

Attendees:

  • 3M- Sue Boettcher
  • Auto-Graphics – Eric Jung
  • Bibliotheca – Vince Johnston
  • Colorado State Library – Brenda Bailey-Hainer (Chair), Steve Gregory, Steve Wrede
  • Endeavor Information Systems – Jens Dill
  • Dynix – Gail Wanner
  • Ex Libris (USA) Inc – Randy Menakes
  • Fretwell Downing, Inc. – Ed Davidson, John Bodfish
  • GIS Information Systems – Robert Gray, Candice Zemon
  • Innovative Interfaces, Inc. – Jason Boland
  • OCLC, Inc. – Tony O’Brien
  • Relais International, Inc – Kevin Stewart
  • Sirsi Corporation – Mark Needleman
  • Talis – Terry Wilan
  • The Library Corporation – Ted Koppel

The call was hosted by Sirsi.

The agenda distributed on Sept 8, was reviewed and the group agreed to add additional topics to the area of topics recently discussed on the NCIP listserv.

Bailey-Hainer reminded the group that the determination of an agenda for the next meeting of the NCIP IG in Ottawa on October 18-19 was the prime focus of this call.  A tentative agenda will be posted to the NCIP listserv no later than September 20, with a final agenda set by October 4.  Members wishing to add items to the October 18-19 meeting agenda should post them to the NCIP Listserv by Oct 1.

Stewart reminded everyone planning to stay at the Business Inn Hotel in Ottawa that reservations must be made by September 5.
 
NCIP Listserv Topics

  • TLC proposal to make the “Application Profile Type” within the Initiation Header element a required element – After some initial group discussion it was determined that the discussion needs to be restarted on the NCIP listserv.
  • Unique Agency ID – Discussed in July on NCIP Listserv but no resolution reached.  There currently is no industry standard and several members question the need for a truly unique agency ID.  Koppel agreed to provide a non-normative set of examples of Agency ID’s.  Topic involved to a discussion of the need create NCIP Implementation Guidelines, which was received favorably by several members.  Guidelines will need to be broken down into sections and volunteers to create the individual sections.  Would be posted on NCIP website for distribution.
  • LookUp User revised text – Mark Needleman to re-post text to NCIP listserv with a two week period for comments before a formal vote.

DTD and XSD issues

Marketing and PR

Bailey-Hainer reported that some 20 vendors were contacted about NCIP IG at the ALA Annual 2004 Meeting in Orlando.

Several new members have asked to join the Implementation Group and there have been new additions to the NCIP Listserv.   Several of these new additions have from non-vendor sites.

The RFP Writer’s Guide update was completed in July and delivered.

Volunteers have put an article on the benefits of NCIP together from the IG, and Wanner is working on a final draft.  Bailey-Hainer has been working on placement of the article and the posting of NCIP related press announcements.

Wanner will follow up with Dan Iddings concerning a presentation at OCLC Council meeting.

Gregory and Needleman will be doing a presentation on NCIP at the ’04 Access Conference immediately preceding the Oct 18-19 NCIP IG meeting.   The presentation will be posted to the NCIP listserv for comment and inclusions prior to the Access Conference.  Gregory and Needleman asked that information on current NCIP implementations be forwarded to them for inclusion in the presentation.

NCIP IG Chair

Bailey-Hainer reminded the group that her Chair appointment was for one year and will be completed in November ’04.  Nominations and voting for a new Chair will take place at the October 18-19 meeting.

Tuesday, Mar. 30, 2004

Minutes NCIP-IG Conference call Meeting March 30, 2004

Attendees:

  • Barbara Vance
  • Ted Koppel
  • Tony O'Brien
  • Mark Needleman
  • Sue Boettcher
  • Steve Wrede
  • Steve Gregory
  • Brenda Bailey-Hainer
  • Randy Menakes
  • Gail Wanner
  • Kevin Stewart
  • Rob Gray and additional GIS Information Systems staff

This call was hosted by The Library Corporation.

The group agreed to add a discussion of Communications Procedures and an update from the recent IPIG meeting to the agenda for this call.

DTD Changes

No substantial changes or objects have been posted in response to the version 1.01 posted to the listserv in January. The changes in version 1.01 were the results of the November, 2003 meeting of the Implementation Group.

O'Brien will confirm that the changes in version 1.01 will be backwards compatible with applications using the current version of the DTD.

Needleman volunteered to complete the documentation necessary for version 1.01.

Maintenance Agency will publish version via NCIP website and assure that NISO references this latest version.

Implementation Agreement on use included in May Agenda.

Defect Reports

Wrede to post defects from November meeting to NCIP listserv and web site for comment/discussion.

Agenda for Next Meeting

Next meeting will be Monday May 10 and Tuesday May 11 at the Warwick Hotel, Denver. See NCIP website for details.

Tentative Agenda for May 10/11 determined from this phone call

  • Discussion of timeframe for Implementation Group to transition to version 1.01 of DTD.
  • Status of current NCIP implementations- each member to report.
  • Status update from NCIP Maintenance Agency.
  • New proposals
  • Updates from other standards (IPIG, Meta Search Authentication, and others.)M
  • Marketing and Promotion of NCIP
  • Application Profiles
    • Revisit proposal for NCIP Remote Patron Authentication (Gregory)
    • Review of current agreement for Application Profile (OíBrien and Needleman)
    • Discussion of changes for Application Profile template (Gregory and Wrede)
  • Need for a NCIP directory
    • Review and determine need from the entire Implementation Group. Preparation for the subcommittee meeting on Wednesday, May 12.
  • New Implementation Group members
    • Particular attention should be directed to organizations with NCIP clients to assist with testing and development of NCIP servers.
  • Agenda for May 10, 11 meeting to be finalized by April 30

NCIP Directory

Subcommittee meeting to be held 8:30am - noon on Wednesday May 12, in room 515 of Colorado Department of Education ñ 201 E. Colfax. At this point in time attendees to include: Ted Koppel, Gail Wanner, Mark Needleman, Steve Wrede, and possibly Ed Davidson. Others are invited to attend.

Communication Procedures

Koppel noted that as much communication as possible should go out to the entire NCIP listserv. The others in the group agreed and Maintenance Agency will assure this.

Update from IPIG and implications for NCIP directory

Server for ILL directory has been available as a pilot from OCLC, but very little traffic or interest has been generated. These lacks of traffic/interest along with staff changes at OCLC make the continuation of this service unlikely.

Meeting costs

It was agreed that the costs (room charges and food) for the next meeting will be split among the attendees. Each attendee will receive an invoice for their share at the meeting. The estimate for the per attendee costs are $50-$100.

Other/Misc

Comments and suggestions for the NCIP website are encouraged. Please send directly to Steve Wrede.

Bailey-Hainer to pursue additional information on RFP guide by May meeting.

Bailey-Hainer will chat with NISO about any plans they have to market NCIP by May meeting.

Bailey-Hainer/Wrede to determine dinner plans for evening of May 10. Group wants variety!

2003

Thursday, Sept. 18, 2003

Minutes NCIP-IG Conference call Meeting September 18, 2003

Attendees:

  • Barbara Vance
  • Ted Koppel
  • Tony O'Brien
  • Mark Needleman
  • Jens Dill
  • Sue Boettcher
  • Frances McNamara
  • John Bodfish
  • Steve Wrede
  • Steve Gregory
  • Randy Menakes
  • Gail Wanner
  • Rob Gray and additional GIS Information Systems staff

This Conference Call was hosted by Innovative Interfaces Inc.

It was agreed that the main purpose of this call was to set up the next meeting which will be the first with the NCIP Maintenance Agency.

1. The group welcomed Colorado State Library as the newly appointed Maintenance Agency for NCIP. Steve Wrede and Steve Gregory from Colorado State Library were on the call. Brenda Bailey-Hainer, Director, Networking and Resource Sharing Colorado State Library, was not able to be on the call but will be able to attend the meeting in November. Colorado State Library will host the meeting and once the dates are set will probably arrange for the meeting to take place in a hotel close to the State Library. They are working on arrangements.

2. Next meeting. Thurs.-Friday November 13-14 were agreed to as the meeting dates. There were no objections. The site of the meeting will be Denver since the major discussion topic will be how NCIP-IG will work with the Maintenance Agency, and like most libraries these days Colorado State Library has limited funds for travel. Meeting in Denver should make it easier for their staff to attend this first meeting with NCIP-IG.

3. Agenda for November meeting. It was agreed that topics for the agenda would be collected at this meeting, then distributed and discussed on the list. A major topic will be working with the maintenance agency but any topics suggested on the list should be added and can be prioritized and scheduled based on the time available at the meeting.

Agenda Topics:

1. How NCIP-IG will work with the Maintenance Agency

Review the entire list of activities for Maintenance Agency in Appendix G of the protocol

Review NCIP-IG Purpose and Structure from inaugural meeting to see if procedures outlined there can help with some reviews of defects, etc.

2. Apply defect/amendment review procedures to existing proposals. Use the proposals on the NCIP-IG list that have already been discussed at meetings and on the email list by NCIP-IG. There are currently 4 outstanding proposals which can be found at PROPOSALS. (Editor's note: These proposals are no longer available.) Tony O'Brien may combine the 2 proposals he made into one before the Nov. meeting. Mark Needleman will turn the recent list discussion of the use of the NCIP version message into a proposal before the Nov. meeting.

3. Discuss DTD to Schema change. This was proposed by Kevin Stewart as an implementers' agreement and did not get consensus. It should be discussed.

4. Discuss Web Service. Should NCIP be a web service?

5. Status of current implementations. Members can report.

6. Update and review message chart for Active Implementations. Review existing and proposed Implementers Agreements

7. Web seminar for consultants

8. ALA NISO NCIP presentation. It was suggested there should be an update on NCIP by presenting successes. At one time Pat Harris seemed to think this might be a topic for the mid-winter ALA NISO session. Steve Wrede will talk to her. Possibly it might be a summer ALA thing. A panel would be good.

9. NCIP policy information. Report from group who looked at this issue after the April meeting.

10. Vote for NCIP-IG chair

11. Schedule NCIP-IG meetings for the next year.

NEXT MEETING

November 13-14, 2003 in Denver. In the next week Colorado State Library will post information about the hotel where the meeting will be held. It was agreed that Frances will solicit agenda topics on the discussion list and build an agenda via the list. If it is felt that a conference call is needed in October to complete planning for the meeting it will be scheduled.

Friday, Mar. 21, 2003

Minutes NCIP-IG Conference Call March 21, 2003

Attendees:

  • Bob Gray
  • Janaki Shankar
  • John Barr
  • Mark Needleman
  • Barbara Vance
  • Gail Wanner
  • Randy Menakes
  • John Bodfish
  • Sue Boettcher
  • Kevin Stewart
  • Frances McNamara

This Conference Call was hosted by Innovative Interfaces, Inc..

1. Announcements, Heads Up. Frances had talked to Pat Harris at NISO. She has almost reached agreement with a non-vendor organization to act as the NCIP Maintenance Agency although it is possible that OCLC may do the registration part. Frances will follow up to see if the Maintenance Agency can send a representative to the April meeting or, if not, whether a conference call could help to start discussions at that time.

2. Agenda for April 7-9 meeting in Dublin, Ohio. Frances solicited agenda topics. She will need to compile them into a proposed agenda and put a draft out to the list for comment.

Topics:

"Pick up location problem" Tony O'Brien of OCLC has raised this issue. It was suggested that Tony should write up the problem and suggested solution and that should be discussed. It may require a change to the protocol, so is a good example of something that needs a procedure to address it. This may also feed into a discussion of NCIP registration.

"How to accept/pay fees on a checkout" Sue Boettcher raised this issue which will require either the addition of a field or the use of two messages. Sue will write up the problem and a proposed solution.

Procedures to change the protocol. How to make defect reports. Do we change the DTD or revise it? Using the above two examples of problems, Mark Needleman will lead a discussion of what is needed for NCIP. Ideally we will have a representative of the Maintenance agency working on this with us.

Implementer's Guidelines. It was suggested there should always be a portion of the meeting to cover this. There are 4 proposed implementers guidelines that need to be sent to the list and reviewed for a month before acceptance. They include

  1. patron name queries
  2. treatment of invariant characters
  3. how to handle a response with item use restrictions
  4. how to handle character encodings.

John Bodfish has planned to propose these. Unfortunately John will not be able to attend the April meeting.

A section on How NCIP an work with Shibboleth

How to exchange policy information. This is on the outstanding list of issues as How to access and/or exchange NCIP-related library policy information? What kind of information would be required? NCIP Schemes? User/Item Categories & associated policies? Location related policies? All of the above? Would a directory be needed? When is this likely to become a necessity?

Web Seminar for consultants. Gail Wanner will not be able to attend the meeting. She will draft an outline of this proposed presentation and Barbara Vance will lead a discussion of it.

NISO RFP guide. Frances will propose alternate text for the section that covers NCIP, since it seems not to say enough about DCB and Self Service profiles. She will lead a discussion of that.

Schedule for future meetings, phone calls or face-to-face

Since some participants in the monthly calls will not be able to attend, there is a need to try to provide conferencing facilities for parts of the meeting. In particular John Bodfish was concerned about the discussion of the Pickup location problem. Frances mentioned that Steve Gregory of Colorado had said in a previous call that he could not attend the on site meeting. There is also a need to produce good minutes. It was suggested that we ask Ed Davidson if he could do some or all of the minutes.

3. Next face-to-face meeting. Tony O'Brien of OCLC will send a posting concerning reservations for the hotel for the April meeting. It was decided that the substance of the agenda would be put off until the March conference call but that everyone would assume that "low stress" items would be reserved for the last afternoon as people will be leaving. So far it seemed like approximately 10 people would be coming. Steve Gregory said he could not do the travel and there was some discussion of doing a conference call for a part of the agenda.

4. Action Items from the last meeting:

  • Web seminar (for consultants). Will be discussed at the April meeting
  • Messages/profiles supportedí grid. No need for action. People should send additions and changes to Frances.
  • XML test data. No action required. It was decided on the last call, to wait longer for input before any revisions are distributed.
  • Z39.50 holdings record structures & data elements which map to NCIP data elements. OCLC was added this month.
  • John will post proposal on how to do patron name queries in an NCIP application environment. Not yet done.
  • Implementer's guidelines. Some guidelines that had been discussed have not yet been proposed and posted. These include the discussion of invariant character handling, and a couple of others. John will post to list.
  • In the last call, John Bodfish proposed that NCIP-IG register the NCIP internet protocol with the name "ncip" for the socket connection for NCIP messaging. After discussion it was decided this would do no harm and could be useful. Since a specific person needs to be named, John will provide Frances with this request to register the defined transport mechanism for TCP/IP under NCIP and this will be submitted to IANA. A second issue raised by Tony O'Brien was whether there needs to be a fourth transport mechanism added to the protocol that would allow for a secure way to transfer on top of TCP. Should ssl on top of TCP go into the Implementation Profile. This needs to be put on a list of open issues to be tracked and Tony needs to make a proposal and post it to the list. POSTPONED AS NOT CRITICAL

5. Next meeting. April 7-9 at OCLC in Dublin Ohio.

Friday, Feb. 14, 2003

Minutes NCIP-IG Conference Call Feb 14, 2003

Attendees:

  • Steve Gregory
  • Bob Gray
  • Shankar
  • John Barr
  • Ted Koppel
  • Tony O'Brien
  • Mark Needleman
  • Barbara Vance
  • Jens Dill
  • John Bodfish
  • Sue Boettcher
  • Kevin Stewart
  • Frances McNamara

This Conference Call was hosted by Gaylord.

1. Announcements, Heads Up. Frances has set up the Active Implementations page and distributed the password to designated representatives of organizations that are active. After discussion, it was decided that John Bodfish would update the grid of messages and send it to Frances to post. After this additions and changes should be sent to Frances rather than John. It was suggested that there should be a link to profiles on the NISO site on an interim page between the Active Implementations site and the actual grid.

2. Frances reported that she had talked to Pat Harris at NISO. Pat still did not have a Maintenance Agency but had been talking to at least one potential volunteer site. Frances had also talked to Anne Beaubien of the ALA RUSS ILL Committee. She had talked to her committee at ALA Midwinter and they suggested a combined committee of their members and the ALA LAMA SASS Circulation/Access Committee might be a possibility. Frances asked her to contact Pat Harris about this.

3. Next face-to-face meeting. Tony O'Brien of OCLC will send a posting concerning reservations for the hotel for the April meeting. It was decided that the substance of the agenda would be put off until the March conference call but that everyone would assume that "low stress" items would be reserved for the last afternoon as people will be leaving. So far it seemed like approximately 10 people would be coming. Steve Gregory said he could not do the travel and there was some discussion of doing a conference call for a part of the agenda.

4. Action Items from the last meeting:

  • Web seminar (for consultants). It was decided that a subcommittee of Gail Wanner, Barbara Vance, Mark Needleman and Frances McNamara will work up this presentation and show it to the broader group before offering it to consultants. No progress was reported on this item.
  • Messages/profiles supportedí grid. Frances had posted the most recent version to a pass-worded portion of the web site and distributed the password. It was decided that maintenance of the grid should go to Frances so John Bodfish will send what he has.
  • Password protected portion of the NCIP-IG web site. Frances had set this up and distributed passwords.
  • XML test data. Tony had put this out and it is posted to both the list and the web page. Tony had some feedback from Sirsi but would wait for more feedback before putting out another version.
  • Organizations will report on Z39.50 holdings record structures & data elements which map to NCIP data elements. OCLC, Ex Libris, Innovative Interfaces, Inc., Sirsi and TLC The Library Corporation had provided information which has been posted. The others need to send theirs to the list.
  • Mark Needleman had posted information about LDAP schema mapping to NCIP elements to the list for comments and suggestions.
  • John will post proposal on how to do patron name queries in an NCIP application environment. Not yet done.
  • Implementer's guidelines. Some guidelines that had been discussed have not yet been proposed and posted. These include the discussion of invariant character handling, and a couple of others.
  • In the last call, John Bodfish proposed that NCIP-IG register the NCIP internet protocol with the name "ncip" for the socket connection for NCIP messaging. After discussion it was decided this would do no harm and could be useful. Since a specific person needs to be named, John will provide Frances with this request to register the defined transport mechanism for TCP/IP under NCIP and this will be submitted to IANA. A second issue raised by Tony O'Brien was whether there needs to be a fourth transport mechanism added to the protocol that would allow for a secure way to transfer on top of TCP. Should SSL on top of TCP go into the Implementation Profile. This needs to be put on a list of open issues to be tracked and Tony needs to make a proposal and post it to the list. Not yet done

5. Next meeting. Friday March 21 10 AM EST. Innovative Interfaces Inc. will sponsor the call.

Friday, Jan. 17, 2003

Minutes NCIP-IG Conference Call Jan. 17, 2003

Attendees:

  • Steve Gregory
  • Bob Gray
  • Ted Koppel
  • Mark Wilson
  • Tony O'Brien
  • Mark Needleman
  • Randy Menakes
  • Barbara Vance
  • Jens Dill
  • John Bodfish
  • Frances McNamara

This Conference Call was hosted by Sirsi, inc.

1. Announcements, heads up. Mark Wilson introduced Ted Koppel, Senior Product Manager, who will represent The Library Corporation. Frances said the Colorado Virtual Library had decided to be an official member of NCIP-IG. They are mostly interested in exploring the initiator/client side of the protocol. Steve Gregory will represent them in conference call and email discussions, although he will not be able to travel to meetings.

2. Frances reported that she had talked to Pat Harris at NISO last week. NISO has not found a maintenance agency for NCIP. Frances had relayed suggestions from the group. Pat said that NISO would not be able to act as the maintenance agency, which was one of the suggestions. With only 2 staff members it is not feasible. Pat sent a solicitation for an organization to act as NCIP Maintenance Agency to NISO member organizations. Mark Needleman sent a copy to the ncipimp list. Pat had not talked to Barb Shuh at NLC but said for a national standard NISO thinks it would be better to have a US organization. 3M was mentioned since it had maintained the SIP as the forerunner of NCIP. But only OCLC has offered to take on the role. Frances commented that both are vendors with applications which seems to be the objection. There was discussion of attracting some other organization. Pat had said LC had not expressed interest although aware that NISO is looking for someone to do this. Mark Needleman sent a description of maintenance agency from NISO Operating Procedures to ncipimp. The suggestion was made that if some state or university library (even LC) lacked funds to take on this responsibility perhaps there could be a fee for vendors to help support it in order to have what was perceived to be an unbiased agency. That would require incorporation of some kind of group. The suggestion was raised that some ALA Committee might act as the agency. NCIP-IG members attending ALA Midwinter will investigate. Mark Needleman will talk to the LITA president.

3. Action Items from the last meeting:

  • Gail will come up with web seminar (for consultants). Gail had sent an email description to ncipimp. It was decided that a subcommittee of Gail Wanner, Barbara Vance, Mark Needleman and Frances McNamara will work up this presentation and show it to the broader group before offering it to consultants. All had seen the email and there were no objections to the proposal although Frances commented you would have to be careful about trying to report vendor implementation plans and current status..
  • John will maintain ‘messages/profiles supported’ grid. John had received information from 2 people but had not yet compiled it. He will provide an updated grid to Frances next week to post.
  • Frances: Grid will be password protected on NCIP-IG website. Frances had sent out a sample of the pass-worded pages but still needs to get the passwords set up and distributed.
  • Tony will produce/own a set of dummy XML test data for agencies, users, items (2 of each?), for interop testing,. Tony apologized and said he would get this out next week.
  • Organizations will report on Z39.50 holdings record structures & data elements which map to NCIP data elements. Ex Libris, Innovative Interfaces, Inc., Sirsi and TLC The Library Corporation had provided information which has been posted. The others need to send theirs to the list.
  • Mark W. to look into NCIP data elements that can potentially be derived from Z39.50 data. Mark Wilson had done this in a posting to the list
  • Mark N. will find and review the academic LDAP schema. Mark Needleman had not yet done this.
  • Mark N. will map open URL to NCIP. Mark Needleman posted this and Frances put it on a page.
  • John will post proposal on how to do patron name queries in an NCIP application environment. John reported he had not done this but promised to post it to the list for discussion the week of Jan. 20.
  • Implementer's guidelines. John Bodfish had not yet posted his suggested guideline that was discussed in the last meeting. He will do this and Frances will post it to a page of Pending guidelines for 2 weeks. John will also post the results of the discussion of invariant characters and Frances will post.
  • NEW ISSUES. John Bodfish proposed that NCIP-IG register the NCIP internet protocol with the name "ncip" for the socket connection for NCIP messaging. After discussion it was decided this would do no harm and could be useful. Since a specific person needs to be named, John will provide Frances with this request to register the defined transport mechanism for TCP/IP under NCIP and this will be submitted to IANA. A second issue raised by Tony O'Brien was whether there needs to be a fourth transport mechanism added to the protocol that would allow for a secure way to transfer on top of TCP. Should SSL on top of TCP go into the Implementation Profile. This needs to be put on a list of open issues to be tracked and Tony needs to make a proposal and post it to the list.

4. Next meeting. The next meeting will be a conference call hosted by Gaylord Friday February 14 at 10AM EST. Since a maintenance agency has not been appointed it was decided to go ahead and start planning a 3 day meeting. OCLC had offered to host the meeting in Dublin Ohio. Tony O'Brien agreed to investigate dates for this meeting. April 7-9 was suggested since and IPIG meeting that was scheduled for those days has been cancelled. If OCLC has any problems with those days it was agreed that some dates in May would be acceptable.

2002

Friday, Dec. 6, 2002

Minutes NCIP-IG Conference Call Dec. 6, 2002

Attendees:

  • Steve Gregory
  • Robert Gray
  • Janaki Shankar
  • Mark Wilson
  • Tony O'Brien
  • Mark Needleman
  • Kevin Stewart
  • Barbara Vance
  • Jens Dill
  • Ed Davidson
  • Gail Wanner
  • John Bodfish
  • Frances McNamara

This Conference Call was hosted by epixtech, inc.

1. Announcements, heads up. Mark Wilson told the group that it may be that he will be replaced by a colleague as the TLC representative. He also highly recommended an article in the January C C++ Users Journal on template parsing. He posted the citation to the list during the discussion.
Frances warned that her email had been unavailable for the past 2 days in case anyone had tried to reach her that way before the meeting. John asked to add discussion of a proposal for a guideline to the agenda.

2. Action Items from the last meeting:

  • Gail will come up with web seminar (for consultants). Gail reported she has not done this yet and will not try to schedule the session before ALA Midwinter as originally planned. Barbara had volunteered to work on this with Gail. It was decided that Gail will write up her ideas for this session and post that summary to the list for discussion after that, work will begin on putting together the session with the goal of offering the seminar in the spring before ALA.
  • Frances: App profiles will be labeled as ‘drafts’. Frances reported this has been done on the NISO site.
  • John will maintain ‘messages/profiles supported’ grid. John had not yet compiled this. After discussion it was decided that John will post an example grid to the list and solicit information. In a week, by Dec. 16 he will send a first draft to Frances who must get the password protected pages set up on the NCIP-IG website. John will continue to collect and expand the grid as other implementers contribute their information. Frances will make sure the grid gets posted and passwords distributed to the IG member implementers.
  • Frances: Grid will be password protected on NCIP-IG website. Frances reported this had not been done yet but she will follow up and get it set up when she receives the first draft of the grid from John.
  • Tony will produce/own a set of dummy XML test data for agencies, users, items (2 of each?), for interop testing, starting with some data from Sue. Tony reported he had not received the data from Sue discussed at the last meeting but had proceeded to compile a set of "simple" test data to start with. He hopes to post this to the list before Christmas but if it is not completed by then he plans to post soon after the New Year. Tony explained he planned to keep it simple by not testing Unicode character set support in the first set of test messages. The others encouraged him to include non-ASCII in authentication prompt and also in Patron Name elements..
  • Organizations will report on Z39.50 holdings record structures & data elements which map to NCIP data elements. ExLibris, TLC and Sirsi have contributed their information, the other members have not yet done so. The group asked Frances to post these to the pass-worded section of the website even though there are warnings in most that they can change with time. There was discussion about how difficult it is in the current Z39.50 implementations to deal with all of the variations. There was general agreement that "the whole thing is a mess" (meaning how you get holdings data from library systems via Z39.50) and that the expectation is that the Bath and National Z39.50 profiles should improve the situation. Unfortunately Mark Needleman, who is on the standards committees for those profiles, reported that agreement has not yet been reached. Most expected that NCIP will be needed before those profiles stabilize and as a result implementers will need to continue to struggle with the individual variations. As a result collecting this information system by system will be helpful to early implementers and some of the group have a lot of experience in dealing with the issues involved. It is hoped they can help NCIP implementers who have to implement Z39.50 as well as NCIP for the first time. Barbara said she would provide the Innovative information in the next few weeks, John will provide Epixtech information in January and Ed can provide Fretwell Downing information. There is a hope that there can be some generalization of how best to deal with the Z39.50 information when implementing NCIP and that those who have already done this can share what they know.
  • Mark W. to look into NCIP data elements that can potentially be derived from Z39.50 data. Mark Wilson reported he had talked to Barbara Shuh of National Library of Canada and she had suggested that he not try to use Bib1 to do this analysis. This was discussed and disputed. Mark Needleman reported that Bib2 is not actually being used by anyone so it was unclear whether using that would be helpful. Mark Wilson will talk to Barbara again and will probably go ahead and do this analysis based on Bib1 because it is what most people have to deal with right now.
  • Mark N. will find and review the academic LDAP schema. Mark Needleman had not received information he needed from David Millman at Columbia to proceed with doing this however he reported that he would see Dave at the CNI meeting both were attending and would get the information and provide the review.
  • Mark N. will map open URL to NCIP. Mark Needleman reported there is nothing to map right now as the new OpenURL standard is not yet available, however it was agreed that he should go ahead and map from the de facto Open URL standard that is being called version ".1". Mark reported the new standard will add information. It will be more extensible by providing a registry of metadata formats. Mark will work on this after the New Year.
  • John will post proposal on how to do patron name queries in an NCIP application environment. John reported he had not done this but promised to post it to the list for discussion by Monday.
  • NEW TOPIC. John Bodfish explained that in doing case modeling for their NCIP application they had run into a situation where they wanted to propose a guideline that all the implementers could agree on. The situation is when an initiator sends a request, responder fails the request because there is a condition (e.g. building use only), the initiator sends a new request specifying agreement with the condition, requestor fails the request with a second condition (e.g. there is a fee) The question was how best to handle this situation. After discussion it was generally agreed that the best thing would be if you said the responder always had to answer the initial request with all applicable conditions, i.e. building use only and the fee. So all conditions need to come back in the response to the Request Item. This requires all the NCIP responder applications to be able to do this, so John will write this up and propose it to the list. Frances will start a page of guidelines for implementers and will put this proposed guideline up in a section marked as Pending. John will ask for discussion and agreement within a 2 month period. At the end of the 2 months, if agreement is reached from the listserv Frances will remove the PENDING and it will be a guideline. It was suggested that the same thing be done with the explanation for how to use invariant character set in NCIP implementations. This had been recently discussed on the list and it would be useful to keep the results in the guidelines section of the website.

3. Other
Mark Wilson recommended ICU IBM Unicode classes for C, C++ and Java as highly useful. He will post a message to the list about this.
The group thanked epixtech for hosting this call.

4. Next meeting. The next meeting will be a conference call hosted by Sirsi Friday January 17 at 10AM EST. Mark Needleman will schedule it and provide call in information closer to the time. Tony asked about scheduling the next face-to-face meeting. Frances asked that this be postponed until the January meeting because she hopes NISO will be able to announce the NCIP Maintenance Agency and that the meeting could be coordinated with that agency to be sure they are represented. She promised to contact NISO to try to get a Maintenance Agency representative to participate in the Jan. call.