Posted by effulgentsia on February 22, 2010 at 10:26pm
Just a reminder that voting for DrupalConSF sessions ends March 1st. If you're attending and want to see one of these library-oriented sessions, please vote for them:
- Shh! This is a (Drupal-powered) Library Site!
- Drupal in Libraries
- SOPAC and Millennium: Two approaches to integrating your library catalog with your Drupal website
Apologies if there's a library-oriented session I missed in the above list. Please add a comment if that's the case.
By 2nd week of March, sessions that made the cut should be posted. If any of these don't make the cut, we may be able to have them as part of BoF sessions.
Comments
I am just joining this group
I am just joining this group and did not have any plans to attend. However, if I was, I would want to see the debate between SOPAC and Millennium.
Maybe not quite a "debate",
Maybe not quite a "debate", but yes it'll be important to lay out how they're alike/different.
Or maybe I'll bring my helmet. ;)
Definitely not a debate
Both modules are great. It'll be a discussion on what they are, what motivated their architectural choices, and for what goals each one is best suited for.
Which one is better for developing countries?
My question would be which is better for developing countries that have relied on UNESCO's CDS/ISIS or WINISIS for their OPAC.
I am assuming that both were developed in North America for North American library needs.
For Jamaica, the National Library just switched over to Drupal and are having problems getting their WINISIS database unto Drupal.
I really am not familiar
I really am not familiar enough with the Millennium module to tell you how well it would fit. Perhaps janusman can speak to that.
I can say that whether you're in a developing country or not is irrelevant with regards to SOPAC. Will it work for you? Yes. Is it the right solution? Maybe--it depends on what you want from your OPAC. SOPAC 2.1 (which is due out very soon) will have consortia and multi-branch support, which will probably be attractive to you. Also, Locum (SOPAC's underlying "engine") is ILS-agnostic. Though if you're not a Sirsi or III system, you'll have to develop a connector from scratch.
Connecting SOPAC/Locum to ILS other than III or Sirsi
Unfortunately, this can be time consuming. Not a problem for a library with a sufficient budget or available IT staff to devote to it, but if that's not the case for you, one thing worth looking into is if you can find other libraries using the same system to jointly fund that development. Ultimately, that's the kind of collaboration that drives open source. The reason that Sirsi and III connectors exist is because there have been libraries who have funded their development.
some more details
It sounds like the problem you're encountering primarily has to do with translation: i.e. how do you get the data from its ILS structure into a drupal-friendly structure. In the case of sopac, we do this by having the ILS export records in the MARC format. If your ILS supports this, and your data is organized in a way which will cleanly export using that format, then you will need a connector which will serve as a communication bridge between locum and your ILS. As John pointed out, connectors have already been written for III and sirsi. I believe that one has also been written for koha.
If you can use an existing connector, but for some reason exporting marc records will not work for you, then you will need to modify a couple of functions in the connector so it will deal with an export format that works for you.
Not sure we can even compare.
Not sure we can even compare. With SOPAC if you want something additional you have it programmed or but with Milli, you’re stuck with what you get. One is OSS and one is closed source. We’re comparing apples and oranges. i personally prefer OSS for it's flexibility.
Clarification
I think the terminology may be confusing here. The "Millennium" being discussed in this thread is the Millennium Integration module, not the closed-source ILS, after which that module was first named, because it initially started out as only being able to connect to that one ILS.
uhm...
When we mention "Millennium" or "Millennium module" we´re really talking about the "Millennium Integration module", which is open source and you can download freely at http://drupal.org/project/millennium ; it just happens to extract records from a closed-source ILS/OPAC (just as SOPAC can) that is also called "Millennium" (by Innovative Interfaces, Inc.)