Document Availability Information API

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Document Availability Information API ( DAIA for short ) is a programming interface (API) for querying current availability information of documents and media in libraries and similar institutions. The DAIA can be used to determine whether and where a document is available with which copies for which services or whether it is currently on loan, for example.

motivation

Established interfaces such as SRU and Z39.50 exist for researching library holdings . For the question of where a specific book or article can be obtained from, openURL can be used under certain circumstances . Only for the question of whether a medium is really 'available' was there no open interface until DAIA was developed. A standard was therefore created that is optimized for integration into mashups .

DAIA was created in cooperation between GBV , the HeBIS network headquarters and the Beluga project of the Hamburg libraries.

properties

DAIA makes it possible to query the availability of a document / medium. However, the term availability is linked to contexts. A book from the lending collection is 'available' if something is to be found shortly, but it is not for the loan available . DAIA therefore abstracts the concept of availability and concretizes it in any number of contexts. The following contexts are basically defined:

  • Local visibility ( presentation )
  • Ausleihbarkeit ( loan )
  • Free access ( openaccess )
  • Mediated access / interlibrary loan ( interloan )

For a query, the specific medium must be known and is referenced with its unique identifier (media URI). There is a base URL for the institution to which the query is sent , the "DAIA address" of the institution concerned. With the base URL and the media URI, a simple DAIA query can be put together via HTTP:

http://example.com/pfad-zur-api?id= media-URI & format = json

No distinction is made between physical and electronic media.

DAIA can differentiate between different types of unavailability, such as:

  • unavailable : not available
  • expected : currently not available with the option of later availability, whereby this can be specified with an exact time or "for an indefinite period" ( unknown )

Web links

  • Slides for the presentation of DAIA at Library Day 2009.
  • Article (PDF), page 5/6 in the special edition of the HeBIScocktail for Librarian Day 2009. (216 kB)
  • Slides (PDF) for the Lightning Talks under the title Defining Availability with the Document Availability Information API (DAIA) at ELAG 2009. (175 kB)
  • Project page on www.gbv.de