Re: [VuFind-General] vufind requirements

[Till K. <kin...@gm...>]

Reginald Amade (ext) schrieb:

> 1.       VuFind can easily ingest metadata in MARCXML format using the 
> latest solrMARC tool

Yes, true.

> I am wondering what the benefits/drawbacks are of (not)using an ILS? 
> Like Voyager.

You only need an ILS if you want to use any of the functionality it 
offers (beyond the catalogue), like library user management, item 
acquisition, cataloging, loan management... As I understand your use 
case you need none of that functionality.

> Does VuFind/Solr need an ILS? We are not using one!

You don't need an ILS. We and several others are running VuFind without 
an ILS. To start, just kick out all the references to an ILS out of the 
VuFind user interface (mainly item status display).

> In fact VuFind acts as a presentation layer, while Solr is performing 
> the hard work under the hood.

Correct.

> VuFind does not physically store the Solr created index in its MySQL 
> database.

No. Solr puts the data into its index on index.

> The MySQL database is used to realize VuFind’s functionality?

Yes, VuFind uses MySQL to track session data (by default, you may use 
any other session handler available in PHP, too), user tags and 
comments, user item lists etc.

> The concern of management.

Management of what? Data management? VuFind doesn't do any data 
management. It just searches an Solr index cleverly and displays the 
results nicely :-). And it brings along one way to build that Solr index 
out of MARC data through solrmarc. But it has no tools to manage or 
aggregate data. That's something an ILS does, but most ILSes are 
restricted to very "narrow" data management use cases in libraries 
(usually cataloging by hand and some way of batch import). So a 
traditional ILS isn't the solution for your needs either, I think.
If I understand you correctly, you need a solution to manage data 
retrieved from different libraries (in your case through OAI). Neither 
VuFind nor Solr are good at that. We use a very heavy commercial 
software for that, but our use case is a large library federation that 
manages all its metadata cooperatively in that central system.
Maybe the Extensible Catalog Project (XC, 
http://www.extensiblecatalog.org/) has something suitable for you?

Till