Discovery Layer Integrations
Institutions will want to have the ability to expose information from the reserves app to their discovery layer.
Their discovery layer may simply display information, or there may be additional functions/features where an app at the discovery layer will need to write information to the Courses app.
| Institution | Current Discovery Layer | Current LMS (one or more) | What system do you use for print reserves | What system do you use for eReserves | Current Integration between ILS and Discovery Layer for Reserves (if any) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Duke University | Blacklight (find.library.duke.edu) | Sakai for main campus; Canvas for business school. | Aleph | Aleph | We no longer actively use Aleph's OPAC, but it is still live to support reserves functions and also some portions of ILR work. We have a webpage on the main library website that works with backend home-grown middleware and our LMS (Sakai) to present reserves info on login. The business school does not use this integration. |
| Wentworth Institute of Technology (FLO) | EDS | Blackboard | Voyager | Voyager (e-books only; no articles) | Blacklight |
| Simmons University Library (FLO) | Course Reserves | ||||
| Texas A&M University | Ebsco's EDS | Blackboard | Voyager | Ares | We use Ares and Voyager, but they don't "talk" to each other. We add reserve items to Ares, and then we add them to Voyager. After we add them to Voyager, then the EDS can display those course reserve items. Also, use Voyager for Course Reserve/ textbooks. We have over 3000 textbooks on Course Reserve. |
| Hildesheim University | VuFind + OPAC provided by ILS | Moodle | home-grown | Moodle | Teachers can add items to a reserve via an OPAC search. Otherwise no integration. Our home-grown reserves software provides a simple html list of items. Additionally we manually modify an item's call number and location so patrons can see in discovey that the item is part of a reserve. |
| Mount Holyoke College (Five College Consortium) | EDS | Moodle | Ares, ALEPH | Ares, Moodle | None–EDS currently sends patrons to the ALEPH (our current ILS) OPAC Reserves search |
| Amherst College | EDS | Moodle | Aleph | Drupal CMS (home-grown) | Moodle leads students to OPAC for reserves |
| Cornell University | Homegrown Course Search that integrates voyager data and Ares data | Canvas and Blackboard (Blackboard retiring after fall 2019. | Voyager, Ares | Ares, Canvas | Homegrown Course Search that integrates voyager data (for physical reserves) and Ares data (for eReserves and streaming media). |
| Germany in general | None or home-grown | None or home-grown | In Germany there is no software available that ist comparable to Ares. There are lots of home-grown solutions but afaik none of them comes even close in functioinality and none is used by more than one or two libraries. There ist therefore a lot of interest to provide as much as possible of the managment and discovery functions directly in FOLIO at least in the mid- to long term. | ||
| New England Conservatory of Music | EDS | NEO | Voyager |
Information about VuFind's ILS-Driver is available here. Vufind supports methods to query an ILS for Items on Reserve and can indicate whether a given item is on reserve. There doesn't seem to be a method, however, to request reserves-related Information (Course, Instructor etc.) for a given item.
In Germany reserves Items are typically placed on open shelves in a designated area. The titles are sorted by Lecturer Name or Course number and are freely available to students. It is essential, therefore, that the discovery layer presents sufficient information so that students can easily find a given reserve item. In addition to the location like "reserves" or "reserves 2nd floor" etc. we need information about course number or instructor name next to each item. Currently this ist typically achieved by manually editing the callnumber or by adding a note that is visible in discovery.
For FOLIO I see the following options to solve this problem:
- Create a separate Location for each course / lecturer so the location info will look like "reserves 2nd floor - Smith" or "reserves law library - european law 203". This solution would, however, create a huge overhead in adding (and later removing) locations and essentially duplicate information already available in the course record.
- Add an option to append Information from an items course record to the location field that is sent to the discovery layer. So if If I choose the option "append course title" an item on reserve for "european law 203" with the location "reserves" would display in discovery as "reserves - european law 203".
- Similar to 2) but inject the information into the call number field or use a temporary call number analog to the temporary location.
- Similar to 2) but inject the information into a generic notes field associated with that item that can be shown in discovery (for VuFind the info would show up in GetHolding - item_notes).
- Similar to 2) but inject the information into a specific field "reserves_detail". Advantage: Discovery layer could use special formatting etc when displaying this info. Disadvantage: Would require changes in the discovery software.
- Provide an API where the discovery layer can query an item's reserves-related info like course name / ID, lecturer etc. and display it as deemed appropriate by the software. In VuFind e.g. the GetHolding Method provides a field "reserve Y/N". If the status is "Y", VuFind would query the API for the necessary information for this item. Currently at least VuFind does not support such a model - so compared to Solution 1)-3) this would require substantial work on the discovery layer as well.