Subject: [CODE4LIB] XC's NCIP Toolkit on Google code

From: "Osisek, Eric" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 16:17:03 -0400

Good afternoon,

The eXtensible Catalog (XC) NCIP Toolkit is now available to the public
for download at http://code.google.com/p/xcnciptoolkit. This project
page, hosted by Google Code, is home to all the up-to-date information
about the NCIP Toolkit including its downloads, documentation, bug
reports, feature requests, and the most updated under-development code.
You just need a Google account to access the project's code, bug
tracking system and other features. 

You can download a compiled .war file for installing the NCIP Toolkit
v0.2, a program for testing the toolkit, and documentation on the
project from http://code.google.com/p/xcnciptoolkit/downloads/list.  If
you prefer to work with the source code, the latest version can be
downloaded from the SVN repository at
https://xcnciptoolkit.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/.  Alternatively, you can
download the code for our alpha version 0.2 release from
https://xcnciptoolkit.googlecode.com/svn/tags/NCIPToolkit_0.2.

The NCIP Toolkit is intended to be installed alongside a compatible ILS
and act as an intermediary between NCIP clients and the ILS. The NCIP
Toolkit will provide an NCIP interface for authentication requests, live
circulation status lookups, and circulation requests. When a client
sends an NCIP request to the toolkit, the request is parsed and sent to
the ILS using its proprietary interface. The response is then translated
back into the NCIP protocol and returned to the client

The NCIP Toolkit can be used as part of the XC system, or on its own to
add NCIP functionality to an ILS. It is a server application written in
Java and is only needed for ILSs that do not already implement the NCIP
protocol.

The NCIP Toolkit is currently only compatible with Voyager, and we are
working on adding support for Aleph and III in a future version which
will also be released to Google code.  We welcome contributions which
will enable compatibility with other ILSs.  The code is set up so a Java
developer can add a support for a new ILS with minimal prior knowledge
of the NCIP protocol, and instructions on adding support for a new ILS
can be found in the documentation from the above link.  

If you have any suggestions, feature requests, or bugs reports we invite
you to submit them to our new issue tracker at
http://code.google.com/p/xcnciptoolkit/issues/list.  Feel free to
contact me with any questions or concerns.

--

Eric Osisek 

Developer of the NCIP Toolkit

eXtensible Catalog Project

University of Rochester

(585) 273-2041

[email-masked]