October 9-10, 2012 (In Person Meeting)
NCIP Standing Committee Minutes October 9-10, 2012 Hosted by Florida Virtual Campus (FLVC) Attended: Mike Dicus (Ex Libris), Tony O’Brien (OCLC), Kelli Benitez (TLC), Rob Gray (Polaris), Peter Collins (Univ. of Penn.), Kevin Stewart (Relais), John Sandstrum (FLVC) (John Sandstrum took Minutes).
Juli Marsh (TLC), John Bodfish (OCLC), and Nettie Lagace (NISO) joined the meeting by telephone during discussion of specific topics during the two days.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012 Implementer’s Updates
Rob Gray – changes to responder working with Relais and Innovative. Worked with Maryland region and III InnReach product with some successes. One sided collaboration, they don’t change but Polaris does. Denver Prospector, issues with due dates. Message swapping with OCLC navigator, Texas kicking into high gear. Did change responder for OCLC. Significant changes, changes to AcceptItem from last meeting caused changes. Using V.1 they have 4 messages for 2.02: lookupuser, request item, accept item and check-out.
Polaris users meeting – move prospector code to help serve melcat (Michigan). Hoped to get talking with Melcat and Relais Maryland group. SIP 3 isn’t encrypted, so can’t use.
Peter – E-ZBorrow System moving to Voyager NCIP. Borrow Direct sticking with ESIP. Kuali OLE system, have been involved with. Gave Kevin the NCIP spec to review. Not built yet.
Kelli – Julie presented SIP and NCIP training to CARL and Library Solutions customers. Like to talk about educating about NCIP.
Kevin – Hong Kong public library, hoping to integrate NCIP with VTLS.
John – looking at Alma developments.
Tony – working with Texas libraries. Consolidating all NCIP 2 toolbox so replaces all the NCIP activities.
Mike – Voyager testing with OCLC Navigator in Idaho; testing going well. Ex Libris is testing Alma integration with OCLC and Relais. Alma testing is coordinated by staff in Israel.
General -- ILLiad – With ILLiad 8.3, you can build an add-on to implement NCIP (per Peter). ILLiad isn’t selling it hard, but is beginning to offer NCIP. They are doing only check-in and check-out. All check-outs being done on one Lending patron record in the system. ILLiad tested NCIP against Aleph using v.1 and III using v.2.
Version 2.x defects/change requests
Change Request – (See e-mail below):
Robert,
I have been working on adding NCIP to the Kuali OLE project. We’re looking at supporting the NCIP 2.02 Lookup Item Set Service. In looking at the Lookup Item Set Response I found a problem with theItemInformation element definition in the HoldingsSet element. In the HoldingsSet definition it states “the contained Item Information element would contain all of the Items associated with the bib”. But theItemInformation element reads “Occurs 0 or 1 time”. The ItemInformation element definition then states “A wrapper for data elements related to a single Item.” The ItemInformation element should read “Occurs 0 or more times.” Having this with a maximum occurrence of one instead of unbounded limits it to one item per HoldingsSet which defeats the purpose of the “Lookup Item Set Service”
Hopefully this issue has already been found and addressed, if not maybe it can be addressed before 2.02 is final. Please let me know the status of this, as we will have to change our requirements to use the “Lookup Item Service” if it has not.
Thank you,
Jeff Fleming
No concrete Use Case, so should the change be tabled? Parking Lot today and bring back tomorrow. Question: in 2.02 “Look Item Set Service”, should the Item Information read “Occurs 0 or 1 time”; “Occurs 1 or more times”; or something else? Would also like to talk to John Bodfish.
The Implementers’ Registry
Update on the Implementers’ Registry: Nettie (NISO) – Can host, but not migrate or maintain it. NISO does not want to pay for an outside hosting service. Rob Gray has been sponsoring the hosted service since the beginning of 2012.
We decided to take down the Registry, since it is not being heavily used. Maybe we should go back to having vendor profiles available somewhere on NISO. Mike said there were some old templates that the NCIP implementers once used. The plan is to export the registry data to some readable output by Oct. 25th.
Update on NISO SIP Working Group
John Bodfish (OCLC) – Oct. 1st first conference call. Membership hasn’t been signed-off yet. John, Ted, Mike Dicus, Rob Walsh, Tony, Rob Gray, Sue, Julie Marsh, Shawn, Scott, Mike Roberts, Jeannie, and others. One significant agenda item was the scope: Relationship between NCIP and SIP standards. SIP3 published as NISO standard and get a committee, then the question of relationship will be discussed. Should they be merged? Don’t want too large a leap since want vendors on board. Want to define both before going forward. Other topics: desire for certification, as 3M used to certify standards. Talk about security. SIP3 – should encryption be required? Concerns about “Best Practices”. Relationship between SIP3 and earlier versions, e.g. retire previous versions? Group will meet every 2 weeks to have 1 hour conference calls.
Some in the NCIP group question waiting to talk relationships after setting up two NISO Standards. John says that there is no closure on these points, still in discussion. Tony asked about patents. John says 3M is working with NISO in regards to patents. Rob Gray says they have patents on workflows and processes, but not the standards. Tony also asked how “baked” is SIP3. They do have a list of comments and corrections from 3M.
Decide when the next conference call will be in the next few days.
What does NCIP SC think? Last we talked we felt it would be confusing for customers to have two standards. Tony and Juli both support that statement. Rob Gray says he thinks NISO should be thinking that way. Rob said Polaris has no desire to go forward with SIP3 since it is not encrypted. Some are recommending use of NCIP.
Libraries shouldn’t have to pay for two different protocols to get the same functionality; however, the market is fragmented and likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. SIP3 is not NCIP, not in XML, not encrypted, etc. NCIP 2.02 is extensible, even implements non-standard, and parses out extensions. Tony does say SIP is light, fast, and good for workstation to circulation transactions, but doesn’t think it is built to be more complex.
So should we allow SIP3 to be a NISO standard since NCIP already does what it does and more? Main question.
Group feels that more talk about relationship BEFORE adopting SIP 3. The other question is “why” NISO wants another standard for something they already have a standard for.
After the call, Tony asked if anyone thought that Self-Service messages should be taken out of NCIP. No one really thought so.
NCIP Education
A discussion about user education was added to the agenda. Peter Collins attended the North West ILL Conference and gave a talk about using NCIP. Librarians hear about it, but don’t see that it’s implemented. They are often unaware of what the cost implications are and whether they need to install extra modules or components to utilize it. His talk discussed XML and compared to HTML. XML data transfer language. Wants to give examples of basic messages and transactions. Peter thinks that many don’t know how it works behind the scenes. Idea: show ways NCIP saves staff time. Mike Dicus says that there are documents done in the past by the SC that might help educate librarians. There is also a case study about cost savings that was published by Auto-Graphics.
Proposed, create a document that string messages together in order to mimic a common workflow.
In the past, the SC found that implementers were only using a small number of messages.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012 Open Discussion Kelli: Discussed user education again. Explain difference between SIP and NCIP to the user, and where it stands. Mike believes that there isn’t a lot to say until the SIP Working Group has made some progress. Need to wait till the NISO SIP WG meets some more and makes some decisions.
Other topics for next year
Change to Data Element Definition of “Item Information” under Data Element “Holdings Set” of NCIP 2.02.
Review “Accept Item” message John Bodfish joined the meeting by conference call, and Tony reviewed the “Accept Item” message. Group discussion followed, based on a topic that was raised at the April in-person meeting.
Definition of Accept Item Service. “When it receives item” Request.
Requested Action Type. “receipt of the Accept item message”. Believes this is a mistake. Conflicts with definition of service. Change to something like “Agency requested to take action upon receipt of the item”
“NCIP Requested Action Type Scheme” Boolean “Who is responsible for sending request?” “Who is responsible for sending notice?” 4 values overall.
At the very least:
Would take out Circulate: “Circulate the item to the User.” And
Circulate and Notify: “Circulate the item to the User.”
Juli Marsh joined the conversation via conference call.
Needs to be more a statement of responsibility and NOT action.
In part 2: NCIP Requested Action ‘Type Scheme – Circulate, Remove first sentence; change “User is responsibility for the future Circulation “
All four statements should be changed to something like “User is responsibility for the future”. John Bodfish agrees. However, he would prefer to publish a new scheme. He thinks applications created due to the text would be wrong, and he’s not comfortable with that. Keeping current data element, with a change, but changing the scheme.
Concern about developing extra schemes for special cases.
Peter likes the wording in Hold for pickup and notify, but wants “responding” replaced with “initiating”.
John: write values what the responder is responsible for, e.g. “hold, but NOT notify” another one could say “hold, and notify”. Tony feels this is a directive.
John: How about “MANAGE circulation”?
Rob: Make a note in current document explaining problem?
John: Putting in part 2 appendix C under “Requested Action Type”, put a link by the existing link that would represent a new scheme that would explain the problem. Requested Action Type Scheme would be the new scheme.
John wants to notify the name of the scheme linked into. URI maybe change as well?
Let’s say we agree that we need to change “manage” and then describe the problem in separate note. So, rewording put in as a note. John Bodfish rejects changing text, but o.k. with note, but should read with some preface, etc. not admitting that we didn’t mean how it was originally written.
Rob: Can we keep the original scheme, but just add the new scheme.
Tony: agrees, however, wants a note in the text explaining what was originally meant. Note is in Part 2.
Tony: Part 1 -- Requested Action Type “receipt of the Accept Item message” with “receipt of item”.
Is there a Standard for Medium types (Media types) Question, NCIP only has a few types defined. In reality, there are many more types than that used by libraries. How are we going to handle these material types? Looking for a standard, but libraries don’t seem to be using standards for these sorts of things (others say). Really need translation table. Rob says options: map to only privilege types in the NCIP standard, or return nothing, or just rely on translation table.
Wrap Up – next meeting dates/location, etc. Where and When next meeting: OCLC host in Dublin. April 23-24 2013. Tentative.
Action Items: Mike will let Rob Walsh know that we have agreed to change the document of the Standard
Juli Marsh (TLC), John Bodfish (OCLC), and Nettie Lagace (NISO) joined the meeting by telephone during discussion of specific topics during the two days.
Tuesday, October 9, 2012 Implementer’s Updates
Rob Gray – changes to responder working with Relais and Innovative. Worked with Maryland region and III InnReach product with some successes. One sided collaboration, they don’t change but Polaris does. Denver Prospector, issues with due dates. Message swapping with OCLC navigator, Texas kicking into high gear. Did change responder for OCLC. Significant changes, changes to AcceptItem from last meeting caused changes. Using V.1 they have 4 messages for 2.02: lookupuser, request item, accept item and check-out.
Polaris users meeting – move prospector code to help serve melcat (Michigan). Hoped to get talking with Melcat and Relais Maryland group. SIP 3 isn’t encrypted, so can’t use.
Peter – E-ZBorrow System moving to Voyager NCIP. Borrow Direct sticking with ESIP. Kuali OLE system, have been involved with. Gave Kevin the NCIP spec to review. Not built yet.
Kelli – Julie presented SIP and NCIP training to CARL and Library Solutions customers. Like to talk about educating about NCIP.
Kevin – Hong Kong public library, hoping to integrate NCIP with VTLS.
John – looking at Alma developments.
Tony – working with Texas libraries. Consolidating all NCIP 2 toolbox so replaces all the NCIP activities.
Mike – Voyager testing with OCLC Navigator in Idaho; testing going well. Ex Libris is testing Alma integration with OCLC and Relais. Alma testing is coordinated by staff in Israel.
General -- ILLiad – With ILLiad 8.3, you can build an add-on to implement NCIP (per Peter). ILLiad isn’t selling it hard, but is beginning to offer NCIP. They are doing only check-in and check-out. All check-outs being done on one Lending patron record in the system. ILLiad tested NCIP against Aleph using v.1 and III using v.2.
Version 2.x defects/change requests
Change Request – (See e-mail below):
Robert,
I have been working on adding NCIP to the Kuali OLE project. We’re looking at supporting the NCIP 2.02 Lookup Item Set Service. In looking at the Lookup Item Set Response I found a problem with theItemInformation element definition in the HoldingsSet element. In the HoldingsSet definition it states “the contained Item Information element would contain all of the Items associated with the bib”. But theItemInformation element reads “Occurs 0 or 1 time”. The ItemInformation element definition then states “A wrapper for data elements related to a single Item.” The ItemInformation element should read “Occurs 0 or more times.” Having this with a maximum occurrence of one instead of unbounded limits it to one item per HoldingsSet which defeats the purpose of the “Lookup Item Set Service”
Hopefully this issue has already been found and addressed, if not maybe it can be addressed before 2.02 is final. Please let me know the status of this, as we will have to change our requirements to use the “Lookup Item Service” if it has not.
Thank you,
Jeff Fleming
No concrete Use Case, so should the change be tabled? Parking Lot today and bring back tomorrow. Question: in 2.02 “Look Item Set Service”, should the Item Information read “Occurs 0 or 1 time”; “Occurs 1 or more times”; or something else? Would also like to talk to John Bodfish.
The Implementers’ Registry
Update on the Implementers’ Registry: Nettie (NISO) – Can host, but not migrate or maintain it. NISO does not want to pay for an outside hosting service. Rob Gray has been sponsoring the hosted service since the beginning of 2012.
We decided to take down the Registry, since it is not being heavily used. Maybe we should go back to having vendor profiles available somewhere on NISO. Mike said there were some old templates that the NCIP implementers once used. The plan is to export the registry data to some readable output by Oct. 25th.
Update on NISO SIP Working Group
John Bodfish (OCLC) – Oct. 1st first conference call. Membership hasn’t been signed-off yet. John, Ted, Mike Dicus, Rob Walsh, Tony, Rob Gray, Sue, Julie Marsh, Shawn, Scott, Mike Roberts, Jeannie, and others. One significant agenda item was the scope: Relationship between NCIP and SIP standards. SIP3 published as NISO standard and get a committee, then the question of relationship will be discussed. Should they be merged? Don’t want too large a leap since want vendors on board. Want to define both before going forward. Other topics: desire for certification, as 3M used to certify standards. Talk about security. SIP3 – should encryption be required? Concerns about “Best Practices”. Relationship between SIP3 and earlier versions, e.g. retire previous versions? Group will meet every 2 weeks to have 1 hour conference calls.
Some in the NCIP group question waiting to talk relationships after setting up two NISO Standards. John says that there is no closure on these points, still in discussion. Tony asked about patents. John says 3M is working with NISO in regards to patents. Rob Gray says they have patents on workflows and processes, but not the standards. Tony also asked how “baked” is SIP3. They do have a list of comments and corrections from 3M.
Decide when the next conference call will be in the next few days.
What does NCIP SC think? Last we talked we felt it would be confusing for customers to have two standards. Tony and Juli both support that statement. Rob Gray says he thinks NISO should be thinking that way. Rob said Polaris has no desire to go forward with SIP3 since it is not encrypted. Some are recommending use of NCIP.
Libraries shouldn’t have to pay for two different protocols to get the same functionality; however, the market is fragmented and likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future. SIP3 is not NCIP, not in XML, not encrypted, etc. NCIP 2.02 is extensible, even implements non-standard, and parses out extensions. Tony does say SIP is light, fast, and good for workstation to circulation transactions, but doesn’t think it is built to be more complex.
So should we allow SIP3 to be a NISO standard since NCIP already does what it does and more? Main question.
Group feels that more talk about relationship BEFORE adopting SIP 3. The other question is “why” NISO wants another standard for something they already have a standard for.
After the call, Tony asked if anyone thought that Self-Service messages should be taken out of NCIP. No one really thought so.
NCIP Education
A discussion about user education was added to the agenda. Peter Collins attended the North West ILL Conference and gave a talk about using NCIP. Librarians hear about it, but don’t see that it’s implemented. They are often unaware of what the cost implications are and whether they need to install extra modules or components to utilize it. His talk discussed XML and compared to HTML. XML data transfer language. Wants to give examples of basic messages and transactions. Peter thinks that many don’t know how it works behind the scenes. Idea: show ways NCIP saves staff time. Mike Dicus says that there are documents done in the past by the SC that might help educate librarians. There is also a case study about cost savings that was published by Auto-Graphics.
Proposed, create a document that string messages together in order to mimic a common workflow.
In the past, the SC found that implementers were only using a small number of messages.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012 Open Discussion Kelli: Discussed user education again. Explain difference between SIP and NCIP to the user, and where it stands. Mike believes that there isn’t a lot to say until the SIP Working Group has made some progress. Need to wait till the NISO SIP WG meets some more and makes some decisions.
Other topics for next year
- Talk to new implementers, e.g. Kuali OLE, ILLiad, perhaps Baker & Taylor
- How do e-book vendors use messages? Rob says they are different than ILL, typically send over the records. Circulation is integrated into the product via the vendor.
- Mike again asks if in-person meetings are necessary. There seems to be a lack of topics. The in-person meetings create a deadline to follow up on action items, and it helps to get together to talk about common issues and questions. We come up with ideas during in-person meetings that we don’t raise during our monthly conference calls. We will plan a meeting in 6 months, and then decide after the 1st of the year if we need to meet.
- ISO ILL replacement: Several organizations are involved, simple XML-based to simplify installation. It is going very quickly, Kevin thinks it is far enough along to go into draft this fall and could be moved into an ISO standard within a year.
- Tony presented samples of xml elements that are in different languages. Discussed different ways to handle xml that we could look at. Smaller element names and tags. This might help in education of the schema as well. This would change the schema, but not the standard. Tony says this is something for future versions, like V. 3.5. Decision: Rob said he’d play around with it and see what he can find.
Change to Data Element Definition of “Item Information” under Data Element “Holdings Set” of NCIP 2.02.
Review “Accept Item” message John Bodfish joined the meeting by conference call, and Tony reviewed the “Accept Item” message. Group discussion followed, based on a topic that was raised at the April in-person meeting.
Definition of Accept Item Service. “When it receives item” Request.
Requested Action Type. “receipt of the Accept item message”. Believes this is a mistake. Conflicts with definition of service. Change to something like “Agency requested to take action upon receipt of the item”
“NCIP Requested Action Type Scheme” Boolean “Who is responsible for sending request?” “Who is responsible for sending notice?” 4 values overall.
At the very least:
Would take out Circulate: “Circulate the item to the User.” And
Circulate and Notify: “Circulate the item to the User.”
Juli Marsh joined the conversation via conference call.
Needs to be more a statement of responsibility and NOT action.
In part 2: NCIP Requested Action ‘Type Scheme – Circulate, Remove first sentence; change “User is responsibility for the future Circulation “
All four statements should be changed to something like “User is responsibility for the future”. John Bodfish agrees. However, he would prefer to publish a new scheme. He thinks applications created due to the text would be wrong, and he’s not comfortable with that. Keeping current data element, with a change, but changing the scheme.
Concern about developing extra schemes for special cases.
Peter likes the wording in Hold for pickup and notify, but wants “responding” replaced with “initiating”.
John: write values what the responder is responsible for, e.g. “hold, but NOT notify” another one could say “hold, and notify”. Tony feels this is a directive.
John: How about “MANAGE circulation”?
Rob: Make a note in current document explaining problem?
John: Putting in part 2 appendix C under “Requested Action Type”, put a link by the existing link that would represent a new scheme that would explain the problem. Requested Action Type Scheme would be the new scheme.
John wants to notify the name of the scheme linked into. URI maybe change as well?
Let’s say we agree that we need to change “manage” and then describe the problem in separate note. So, rewording put in as a note. John Bodfish rejects changing text, but o.k. with note, but should read with some preface, etc. not admitting that we didn’t mean how it was originally written.
Rob: Can we keep the original scheme, but just add the new scheme.
Tony: agrees, however, wants a note in the text explaining what was originally meant. Note is in Part 2.
Tony: Part 1 -- Requested Action Type “receipt of the Accept Item message” with “receipt of item”.
Is there a Standard for Medium types (Media types) Question, NCIP only has a few types defined. In reality, there are many more types than that used by libraries. How are we going to handle these material types? Looking for a standard, but libraries don’t seem to be using standards for these sorts of things (others say). Really need translation table. Rob says options: map to only privilege types in the NCIP standard, or return nothing, or just rely on translation table.
Wrap Up – next meeting dates/location, etc. Where and When next meeting: OCLC host in Dublin. April 23-24 2013. Tentative.
Action Items: Mike will let Rob Walsh know that we have agreed to change the document of the Standard
