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- README
=== About === This is an implementation of unAPI for OCLC PICA integrated library systems (LBS). unAPI is a tiny RESTful HTTP-API for the few basic operations necessary to copy discrete, identified content from any kind of web application. See <http://unapi.info/> for more information. === Copyright === Copyright 2008 2009 Goetz Hatop <hatop@ub.uni-marburg.de>. Goetz Hatop's original version can be found at <ftp://ftp.ub.uni-marburg.de/pub/research/unapi.tar.gz>. Copyright 2009 2010 Stephan Rosenke <rosenke@ulb.tu-darmstadt.de> or <r01-551@r0s.de>. See also <http://r0s.de/unapi>. === License === This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>. === Installation === PHP 5.2.0 with curl module is recommended, for unClient.php PHP 5 is required. If you want use the scripts with lower versions of PHP please check the source for the string "comment out if using PHP4". Edit unAPI.inc.php and set the user-defineable variables. Put the script together with unAPI.php on a web server. Your records identified by PPN (PICA Production Number) will then be available via unAPI, for example: <http://example.com/unAPI.php?id=123&format=xml> Try out unClient.php to see an example on how to fetch data delivered by the unAPI.php server script. The unClient.php requires the unAPI.inc.php to be included, too. Copy them to a place on your web server where this can be accomplished. This need not to be the same server where your unAPI.php script lives. unAPI.html is a simple form to submit PPNs and format to unAPI.php. Copy it to the same directory as unAPI.php. For Bibsonomy.php and Coins.php see below. === What is PICA LBS === OCLC PICA distributes an integrated library system (ILS) named LBS which presents its data for human beings in a search interface called PSI. For automata, the bibliographic records are not really hidden but not available in a useful or standardized format. === About this software === The PHP scripts utilise the so-called XML web interface which usually comes with the LBS software to make bibliographic records available via an unAPI. It formats them as dublin core, in a XML format, BibTeX, JSON or some other formats (for a complete list, query the unAPI without id- and format-parameter). MARC is missed from the list of available formats but could be added if someone can figure out how to map PICA categories to MARC records. The PICA records are retrieved as categories, and all the art of converting them to something like Dublin Core comes down to figure out the meaning of the categories. Internally, PICA+ categories and subfields of the record can be accessed via a multi-dimensional hash (see functions getArray() and getArrayNice() in unAPI.inc.php). Mappings in getArrayNice(), getDublinCore() et al. follow HeBIS cataloguing rules and must possibly be adapted. The program unAPI.php uses PHP curl - if available - to contact an OPAC server and retrieve a bibliographic record identified by a PPN, which is the basic identifier in the PICA world. Which OPAC server to contact can be specified in the file unAPI.inc.php by setting $opac_url. To interpret the bibliographic data the class PicaRecord is used which can be found in unAPI.inc.php. Adaptions to local cataloguing rules should be made in this class. Getting bibliographic records via a clean web interface is a necessary, basic step for further processing the data for web based bibliographies or application to enrich the records further. For an example see <http://www.gbv.de/wikis/cls/Unapi>, especially <http://www.gbv.de/wikis/cls/Unapi#Anwendungen> (only available in german). === Bibsonomy.php and Coins.php === Bibsonomy.php and Coins.php are two example scripts for using unAPI. For information about Bibsonomy, see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BibSonomy>. Bibsonomy uses unAPI classes and functions to redirect an client to Bibsonomy supplying bibliographic data which is identified by a PPN. In the OPAC web interface, only a link with the respective PPN must be included. For example '<a href="http://example.com/Bibsonomy.php?id=123">Bibsonomy</a>'. For information about COinS, see <http://ocoins.info/>. Coins.php uses JavaScript inclusion mechanisms to enrich an OPAC page with COinS - only some JavaScript with the respective PPN is necessary. For example '<script src="http://example.com/Coins.php?id=123" type="text/javascript" language="JavaScript"></script>'. === version of this document=== 20100208: Added information for unAPI.html. 20100127: Added link in copyright. 20100126: Added explanation for PPN, some small corrections. 20100113: Restructured document.
