The DFG-fun­ded pro­jects for the deve­lo­p­ment of spe­cial infor­ma­ti­on ser­vices (FID) for Movie‑, Media- and Com­mu­ni­ca­ti­on Sci­ence at the Leip­zig Uni­ver­si­ty Libra­ry and Book, Libra­ry and Infor­ma­ti­on Sci­ence at HAB Wol­fen­büt­tel in coope­ra­ti­on with the Leip­zig Uni­ver­si­ty Libra­ry, deve­lo­ped soft­ware modu­les tail­o­red to the spe­ci­fic needs of FID por­tals. They can be easi­ly inte­gra­ted into exis­ting sys­tems. The soft­ware modu­les have been used with the open source dis­co­very soft­ware VuFind. They are part­ly depen­dent on VuFind (see infor­ma­ti­on below). All soft­ware modu­les are open source and can be used free­ly. In the fol­lo­wing, the soft­ware modu­les will be brief­ly intro­du­ced in theo­ry and practice.

Content modules

FID por­tals often inte­gra­te avai­la­bi­li­ty infor­ma­ti­on for media, which deter­mi­nes best avai­la­bi­li­ty depen­ding on the insti­tu­tio­nal affi­lia­ti­on of the user. For this pur­po­se, FID con­tent modu­les have been deve­lo­ped. Each of them queries a spe­ci­fic ser­vice of a third par­ty pro­vi­der with user infor­ma­ti­on. It inte­gra­tes the next best avai­la­bi­li­ty in the por­tal front end. In doing so, FID Con­tent modu­les can be inte­gra­ted on the front-end inter­face in any position.

Boss module

With the boss-modu­le, avai­la­bi­li­ty infor­ma­ti­on for print copies is queried and dis­play­ed in the affi­lia­ti­on libra­ry of the FID user. The inte­gra­ti­on is done in VuFind from ver­si­on 5.0 using Com­po­ser and requi­res the avai­la­bi­li­ty of user spe­ci­fic infor­ma­ti­on in the home libra­ry (see Docu­men­ta­ti­on).

Source code:
https://git.sc.uni-leipzig.de/ubl/finc/fid/boss-module

Com­po­ser-Packa­ge:
https://packagist.org/packages/finc/boss-module

dbis-module

The dbis-modu­le allows inte­gra­ti­on of the sub­ject data­ba­se ser­vice DBIS in VuFind (e.g. on a sta­tic web page). Fur­ther, it dis­plays access opti­ons depen­ding on the libra­ry affi­lia­ti­on of the user. The inte­gra­ti­on is done in VuFind ver­si­on 5.0 or hig­her using Com­po­ser and requi­res the avai­la­bi­li­ty of user spe­ci­fic infor­ma­ti­on about the libra­ry affi­lia­ti­on (see Docu­men­ta­ti­on).

Source code:
https://git.sc.uni-leipzig.de/ubl/finc/fid/dbis-module

Com­po­ser-Packa­ge:
https://packagist.org/packages/finc/dbis-module

worldcat-search-module

World­cat-search modu­le allows the direct inte­gra­ti­on of avai­la­bi­li­ty infor­ma­ti­on for print copies in VuFind. The inte­gra­ti­on is done in VuFind ver­si­on 5.0 and hig­her using Com­po­ser (see Docu­men­ta­ti­on).

Source code:
https://git.sc.uni-leipzig.de/ubl/finc/fid/worldcat-search-module

Com­po­ser-Packa­ge:
https://packagist.org/packages/finc/worldcat-search-module

fidis — user administration backend

The user group of FIDs is insti­tu­tio­nal­ly hete­ro­ge­neous. Hence, FID por­tals requi­re authen­ti­ca­ti­on of the user com­mu­ni­ty and the gran­ting of access to licen­sed con­tent after suc­cessful authen­ti­ca­ti­on. For this pur­po­se, an inde­pen­dent, lean, easy to reu­se and abo­ve all inter­face-based user manage­ment solu­ti­on was deve­lo­ped. It can be con­nec­ted to exis­ting sys­tems as backend. The API named fidis (FID Infor­ma­ti­on Ser­vice) was imple­men­ted in Sym­fo­ny and API Plat­form and pro­vi­des the fol­lo­wing manage­ment functions:

• Regis­tra­ti­on and log­in to the por­tal, the sto­rage and deli­very of per­so­nal data (pro­fi­le) of the users and the allo­ca­ti­on to spe­ci­fic groups. In con­se­quence, per­mis­si­on to use cer­tain por­tal func­tions such as access to FID licen­ses can be granted.
• Tech­ni­cal­ly rele­vant infor­ma­ti­on about libra­ri­es in Ger­man-spea­king count­ries are del­li­ver­ed, which can be indi­ca­ted by users as libra­ry affi­lia­ti­on (e.g. a loca­ti­on-based avai­la­bi­li­ty dis­play is rea­li­zed for each user) 
• Pro­ces­sing of orders that are trig­ge­red in the front­end. Here, fidis acts as midd­le­wa­re bet­ween the VuFind front­end and the library’s manage­ment sys­tem by cap­tu­ring the orders and initia­ting sub­se­quent processes 

.

• Admi­nis­tra­ti­on of the abo­ve men­tio­ned log­in infor­ma­ti­on and orders by the libra­ri­an admi­nis­tra­ti­on of the respec­ti­ve FID

Sin­ce all the­se func­tions are acces­si­ble via web inter­faces (API), their com­ple­te inte­gra­ti­on in the web front-end could be rea­li­zed. Neither users nor FID coor­di­na­tors have to car­ry out admi­nis­tra­ti­ve actions via other por­tals. Fidis is espe­ci­al­ly sui­ta­ble as an easi­ly inte­grable manage­ment solu­ti­on for sys­tems like the FID por­tals. It incor­po­ra­tes rest­ric­tions of the backend to the con­cre­te­ly neces­sa­ry func­tion­a­li­ties on the one hand and the imme­dia­te adap­ta­bi­li­ty to ari­sing requi­re­ments of the invol­ved FID on the other hand. Fur­ther­mo­re, the admi­nis­tra­ti­on backend can be easi­ly con­nec­ted to other dis­co­very or libra­ry sys­tems due to its inter­face architecture.

Source code:
https://git.sc.uni-leipzig.de/ubl/finc/fid/fidis

Demo

A demo of the fidis backend is available. It can also be con­nec­ted to local VuFind installations:

https://fid-api.finc.info/demo

VuFind integration

For the inte­gra­ti­on into VuFind the fidis cli­ent is requi­red, which is pro­vi­ded as part of the fid-VuFind release by finc user community:
finc-fid_release-20200526–021ed8be.tar.gz

Acknowledgements

The VuFind FID modu­les were deve­lo­ped in the DFG pro­jects “Fach­in­for­ma­ti­ons­dienst für Medien‑, Kom­mu­ni­ka­ti­ons- und Film­wis­sen­schaft “adlr.link”” (DFG pro­ject num­ber 249151017) and “Fach­in­for­ma­ti­ons­dienst Buch‑, Biblio­theks- und Infor­ma­ti­ons­wis­sen­schaft” (DFG pro­ject num­ber 325715238) at Leip­zig Uni­ver­si­ty Libra­ry and HAB Wolfenbüttel.