WorldCat Local and Voyager Z39.50 Challenges and Solutions Andy Kohler - UCLA Library IT - Voyager Developer Meeting - March 25-26, 20091

The Project OCLC’s WorldCat Local (WCL) chosen to replace Melvyl, the University of California’s Union Catalog May someday replace each UC’s local OPAC too Moves discovery of resources to the network level, while handling delivery options locally Lots more official information: – – Andy Kohler - UCLA Library IT - Voyager Developer Meeting - March 25-26, 20092

The Requirements Retrieve holdings and circulation information from local system in real time UC has mixed systems – Millennium (III), Aleph (EL), Voyager (EL), and Gladis (UCB) Screen-scraping the OPACs: too fragile and slow Use the library standard: Z39.50 Andy Kohler - UCLA Library IT - Voyager Developer Meeting - March 25-26, 20093

Challenges – Search WCL links to local system by Z39.50 search for OCLC number Voyager Z39.50 can’t do an OCLC# search – Bug #82835: Z39.50 server ignores locally-defined use attributes – Z39.50 server does a keyword search, resulting in many false positives (numbers not in 035 field) and false negatives (inconsistent data in record, not normalized, other data in 035) Andy Kohler - UCLA Library IT - Voyager Developer Meeting - March 25-26, 20094

Solutions – Search We combined OCLC# with the prefix ‘ucoclc’ to create a unique keyword in each record – Original: 035 __ $a (OCoLC) – Added: 035 __ $a ucoclc Bulk export/modify/import for initial update of 4.5 million bib records Locally-developed loaders & maintenance programs for new/updated records Andy Kohler - UCLA Library IT - Voyager Developer Meeting - March 25-26, 20095

Challenges - Circulation WCL should be able to show detailed circulation and item status information, like the local OPAC Voyager Z39.50 OPAC format returns minimal circulation information, and no item status info – Date: availableDate (may not be present) – Booleans: availableNow, onHold, renewable Andy Kohler - UCLA Library IT - Voyager Developer Meeting - March 25-26, 20096

Solutions – Circulation (present) Current: use combinations of Z39.50 data to provide best info to user – Not Checked Out – Checked Out, Due – Not Available For Checkout – On Hold – Circulation Information is Unavailable No details, like Lost / Missing / At Bindery etc. Andy Kohler - UCLA Library IT - Voyager Developer Meeting - March 25-26, 20097

Solutions – Circulation (future) Might create web service which returns full circulation and item status information from Voyager OCLC is expanding the utility of their Local Holdings Records (LHRs), which we could update from Voyager via daily batch loads LHRs + circ/item info web service might eliminate WCL’s need for Z39.50 Andy Kohler - UCLA Library IT - Voyager Developer Meeting - March 25-26, 20098

A Z39.50 Wish List Fix the bugs Add item status to the OPAC response Allow configuration of call number data – Remove semicolon from callNumber – Don’t combine $k and $m in shelvingData – Allow site to specify how 852 $k $h $i $j $m are returned Andy Kohler - UCLA Library IT - Voyager Developer Meeting - March 25-26, 20099