Berkeley Accord, ILS API Discussed

For a nuts-and-bolts preview of the future of ILS vendor interoperability, look no further than the May 2008 installment of the Talis Library 2.0 Gang podcast. The episode features a refreshingly candid discussion between vendor representatives and librarians on what is known in the ILS world as the “Berkeley Accord,” an initiative working toward a cross-ILS open standard API (application programming interface) spearheaded by the Digital Library Federation's (DLF) ILS Discovery Interface Task Force.

Joining guest John Mark Ockerbloom, chair of the DLF task force, are Ex Libris's Oren Beit-Arie, SirsiDynix's Talin Bingham, and Talis's Dan Mullineaux representing the vendor perspective, along with librarian technologists Andrew Nagy and Marshall Breeding and the show's host, Richard Wallis, also from Talis.

Though the show identifies a few potential hurdles remaining on the road to the API's development, all participants were optimistic about the opportunities the project could potentially enable and agreed on the benefits of the framework's practical nature and scope.