Hello all. Is anybody reading this working with Axiell -products? Axiell is a major library system vendor here in the Nordic countries, especially for public libraries... their products (PallasPro and Origo) serve about 80% of the population of Finland, and also many in Sweden, Denmark and Norway too. It's a bit of a monopoly -situation here in Finland to be honest :\
I've wondered if anybody here has been using or is planning using Drupal with Axiell ILS-products (Book-IT, PallasPro, Origo, Libra, Aurora). Axiell has an API called Axiell LMS Web Services, which supposedly is DLF ILS-DI 1.1 recommendations -compatible. This could be used for all sorts of things.
I'm aware that most of you probably haven't even heard of Axiell, but it would be good to get in contact with some other library-folks who are using Axiell -products or have some interest in them.
Cheers!
Comments
Axiell and Drupal.
Hi xmacex
Here in Denmark Axiell are serving a major part of the puplic libraries with their system DDELibra - formerly they also used Book-IT but they decided to halt the development for the Danish market some years ago.
The libraries using the DDELibra system can be diveded into three portions:
I'm from a library no. 1... The product we got seemed a bit unpolished and not-well-thoroughly worked as a concept... The base of Axiell Arena is the open source CMS Liferay (runing on a tomcat Apache server) whereupon they (Axiell) has builded their 'own' portlets (aka. modules in Drupal) but... the mayor different between DINGTING and Arena is the approach to the open source concept: Axiell puts their source code in a private cloud (central services) whereas the DINGTING distributes their source code at github >> https://github.com/dingproject/ding.
So the short story is that Axiell have builded a closed source project upon a open source project which I do not have high thoughts about...
Cheers,
Adam
Axiell ILS's↔internet and Drupal
Hi, thanks for the reply Adam, this info confirms what i've heard before.
Here in Finland a separation of the back-office and the front-office is forming too, which opens all sorts of opportunities. By back-office i mean the ILS, eg. PallasPro, Origo, Aurora, and by front-office the internet service platform for patrons, eg. Axiell Arena, Teknikhuset's CS Library or some other ideas... f.ex. one library-cooperative called Kyyti implemented their own Drupal solution.
I'm happy about that separation of back- and frontoffice course... it gives the whole construct more agility, modularity and adaptability.
As an acute task, we are now seeing if we can build a simple Drupal-site, which interfaces both with ExLibris Primo (our National Digital Library, a kind of an union catalogue), and Axiell PallasPro and Aurora's ILS's which take care of circulation, patron management, cataloguing etc.
I know a thing or two about ding.TING of course (we love it), and. Some similar projects are the SOPAC and XC. I have looked at the Ding -Drupal distribution briefly, and my idea was to install it's Dynamo-theme, but it hasn't been ported to D7 yet. I want Finnish libraries to join the Drupal community, and both benefit and contribute to it.
I personally don't mind a company serving an open source project as a service (SaaS) to libraries, but in general Axiell isn't really enjoying a lot of respect around these parts of the world, or that's my impression. And of course i like FOSS (or even OSS), who doesn't!!?! It's great, we wouldn't be here without it!
Are Aurora (a backend ILS) and the Axiell LMS Web Services API something that Axiell is selling or talking about in Denmark? Could you perhaps explain briefly how ding interfaces with the backend ILS (DDELibra)?