indirect acquisition for loaned books

raj kumar

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Aug 5, 2011, 5:44:31 PM8/5/11

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Hi,

I updated the OPDS for openlibrary.org edition records to include the new OPDS 1.1 indirect acquisition elements.

Is there a way to indicate that a book is currently checked out and currently unavailable? Right now I remove the acquisition links if the book is checked out, but it would be nice to indicate to users that the book would be available at a later date.

Example:
If this book isn't checked out of Open Library's lending library:
http://openlibrary.org/books/OL24620870M/The_Elements_of_Content_Strategy

Then its OPDS entry will contain indirect acquisition links:
http://openlibrary.org/books/OL24620870M.opds

Which looks like:
<link rel="http://opds-spec.org/acquisition/borrow" type="text/html" href="http://openlibrary.org/books/OL24620870M/The_Elements_of_Content_Strategy/borrow">
<opds:indirectAcquisition type="application/vnd.adobe.adept+xml">
<opds:indirectAcquisition type="application/epub+zip"/>
<opds:indirectAcquisition type="application/pdf"/>
</opds:indirectAcquisition>
</link>
-raj

Mark Lee

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Aug 5, 2011, 7:38:13 PM8/5/11

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How is a book checked back in? Does it expire on the reader's gardet?

Mark.

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Hadrien Gardeur

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Aug 6, 2011, 6:07:43 AM8/6/11

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Hey Raj,

I updated the OPDS for openlibrary.org edition records to include the new OPDS 1.1 indirect acquisition elements.

Very nice thanks !

Is there a way to indicate that a book is currently checked out and currently unavailable? Right now I remove the acquisition links if the book is checked out, but it would be nice to indicate to users that the book would be available at a later date.

We currently don't have a way to do this. We've been waiting for a real-world example of lending to open these discussions and I'm glad that we can finally do it.

Your current acquisition links already include information about the DRM through an indirect acquisition, but you could potentially add:

how long can the book be borrowed
if the book is available (could be a generic element that we'd also include in a paid acquisition link for preorders)
when exactly the book will be available (once again, useful for both lending and preorders)

We've started work on a reorganized version of the spec, along with the new opds:// scheme for catalog linking, these new elements could be included in a future 1.2 version of the spec once we've agreed on everything.

Hadrien

Hadrien Gardeur

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Aug 22, 2011, 8:37:09 AM8/22/11

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Hey everyone,

Here's my proposal to handle loaned books (& preorders too).

We would introduce two new elements:

Availability

A new "opds:availability" element woule indicate if a title is available or not. This element would also have an optional "date" parameter when availability is set to "false" in order to indicate when the book will be available.

This element could also be used to preorder a book, and not just for lending.

Examples

A book that can be borrowed and that won't be available before the 1st of September:

<opds:availability date="2011-09-01">false</opds:availability>

<opds:indirectAcquisition type="application/vnd.adobe.adept+xml">
<opds:indirectAcquisition type="application/epub+zip"/>

</opds:indirectAcquisition>
</link>

A book that you can preorder and receive on the 1st of September:

<opds:indirectAcquisition type="application/vnd.adobe.adept+xml">
<opds:indirectAcquisition type="application/epub+zip"/>

</opds:indirectAcquisition>
</link>

Expiration

The "opds:expiration" element indicates the date when the acquired publication will expire.

This element could also be used for subscriptions and not strictly for lending.

Example

A book that can be borrowed on the 1st of September and will expire on the 15th of September:

<opds:availability date="2011-09-01">false</opds:availability>
<opds:expiration>2011-09-15</opds:expiration>

<opds:indirectAcquisition type="application/vnd.adobe.adept+xml">
<opds:indirectAcquisition type="application/epub+zip"/>

</opds:indirectAcquisition>
</link>

Hadrien

Hadrien Gardeur

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Sep 7, 2011, 12:40:40 PM9/7/11

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As a follow-up to the previous call conference (http://code.google.com/p/openpub/wiki/CatalogSpecConfCallMeetingNotes20110824) here's an additional proposal.

During the call, I mentioned that both an element for the total number of issues in a subscription and the frequency of publication would be useful.

I've thought about the need for a "frequency" element a little more and since we would have both a length of subscription and a total number of issues, I'm not sure that such an element would be necessary after all. Any thoughts about that ?

Number of issues

The "opds:issues" element indicates the number of issue that will be provided if the user subscribe to a publication.

Example

<opds:expiration>2012-09-07</opds:expiration>

<opds:issues>12</opds:issues>

</link>

Hadrien

Hadrien Gardeur

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Sep 11, 2011, 7:09:57 AM9/11/11

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I'm still thinking about these new elements and wonder if we really need two properties for the "availability" element.

Raj, could you think of a use case where we'd indicate that a book is unavailable without providing a date ?

If we don't know when a book will be available again, should it be included in the catalog ?

If we don't need this, we can simplify the element and only include an availability date:

<opds:availability>2011-09-01</opds:availability>

<opds:indirectAcquisition type="application/vnd.adobe.adept+xml">
<opds:indirectAcquisition type="application/epub+zip"/>
</opds:indirectAcquisition>

</link>

Hadrien

raj kumar

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Sep 12, 2011, 3:47:01 PM9/12/11

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On Sep 11, 2011, at 4:09 AM, Hadrien Gardeur wrote:

I'm still thinking about these new elements and wonder if we really need two properties for the "availability" element.

Raj, could you think of a use case where we'd indicate that a book is unavailable without providing a date ?

If we don't know when a book will be available again, should it be included in the catalog ?

Well, with Adobe Digital Editions, you can return the loan early, which means for a standard two-week loan, we don't really know the availability date, only the date for the common case when the loan isn't returned early.

Another hypothetical case when you don't know the availability date is when you have a lending system that allows users to place a digital hold on the book. You know how many people are on the waiting list, but you don't know whether they still want the book when their turn comes up...

-raj

If we don't need this, we can simplify the element and only include an availability date:

<link rel="http://opds-spec.org/acquisition/borrow" type="text/html" href="http://openlibrary.org/books/OL24620870M/The_Elements_of_Content_Strategy/borrow">

<opds:availability>2011-09-01</opds:availability>
<opds:indirectAcquisition type="application/vnd.adobe.adept+xml">
<opds:indirectAcquisition type="application/epub+zip"/>
</opds:indirectAcquisition>
</link>

Hadrien

Hadrien Gardeur

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Sep 12, 2011, 4:11:37 PM9/12/11

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Well, with Adobe Digital Editions, you can return the loan early, which means for a standard two-week loan, we don't really know the availability date, only the date for the common case when the loan isn't returned early.

Right, so we should include something in the spec that says that the availability date is a hint. Preorders often have vague release dates too.

Another hypothetical case when you don't know the availability date is when you have a lending system that allows users to place a digital hold on the book. You know how many people are on the waiting list, but you don't know whether they still want the book when their turn comes up...

In this case we wouldn't need the availability date, we still need to have an acquisition link (in order for a user to add itself to the queue) and we need to indicate that the book is unavailable.

I don't think that the queue position is something that we can support though.

Well, based on those two examples, we do need to indicate that the element is unavailable. Maybe we could avoid the need to include the "false" value if we renamed to element to "unavailable" ?

<opds:unavailable />

<opds:indirectAcquisition type="application/vnd.adobe.adept+xml">
<opds:indirectAcquisition type="application/epub+zip"/>
</opds:indirectAcquisition>

</link>

<link rel="http://opds-spec.org/acquisition/borrow" type="text/html" href="http://openlibrary.org/books/OL24620870M/The_Elements_of_Content_Strategy/borrow">

<opds:unavailable estimate="2011-09-25" />

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