Innovative hosted the NCIP Implementers Group this week. This group is an interesting mix of vendors eager to extend the capabilities of resource sharing systems. It has been in existence for many years—with our own Sandy Westall, Senior Vice President of Library Service, as a founding member. With the re-affirmation of the NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol, Z39.83 (a new version), last fall, and a change in Chair, the group began this meeting by revisiting its purpose, structures and procedures.
One of the topics of discussion was the idea of implementing a continuous maintenance model for Z39.83, rather than following the more typical five-year review cycle for NISO standards. This idea was attractive to the group, which had just completed a two-year rush to the end of its first five-year reaffirmation cycle. The group also explored the concept of a core set of NCIP messages and defined a basic set of nine messages that support core functionality (and have the added benefit of having been implemented widely). It is hoped that narrowing the focus to these basic message sets will help vendors who have not yet implemented NCIP move forward in support of this interoperability protocol for resource sharing.
Photos
Surveys
Video
April 23rd, 2009 at 10:58 am
Great news! NCIP is a must. Please keep us updated on this groups work and Innovatives implementation plans.