RFC 016: Holdings service

Glossary

  • Holding: TBD

  • Availability: TBD

  • ...TBD

Motivation

To create a public service to request and retrieve items from our collection based on current and evolving requirements in a performant, scalable, and undisruptive manner.

Background

As we move a greater proportion of people over from wellcomelibrary.org to wellcomecollection.org we need to provide a service allowing people to query on and request items based on their availability and location, whether it be online, in the library, or something else.

This document will outline the different services we will need build and integrate with.

We will explore the best way to start developing the service and get it to people for research and testing as quickly as possible, without losing sight of the fact that this service will need to integrate with Sierra, CAS and other services while containing other integral pieces of infrastructure.

We will also assume that we will not be disrupting any current processes across teams outside of the digital platform, or adding more places for library members to manage their relationship with us (i.e. account information).

The project will most likely be a cross team (experience / data / preservation) endeavour, so the process in how we communicate and share what we are doing will be important too.

Proposed solution

Client (Experience)

At first the client would make calls to a separate Holdings API and progressively enhance the page as we would not want to block rendering of the integral catalogue information, nor could we rely on the consistency of the data with Sierra, at least at first. See data principles below.

Identity (TBD)

Requests will need to be authenticated and identified through the current identity service, CAS, as we will need to update Sierra with requests to not disrupt the current workflow of library desk staff.

This authentication can happen as the first step and hopefully we will be able to propegate a token through to the holdings API which will in turn us it to authenticate with the sierra integration.

There is currently a process for setting up a new service with SSO where the keys and knowledge sit with Digirati.

The client can integrate directly with this service.

We need to make sure we don't get sidelined into recreating a whole identity management system as that is not in scope, but to integrate with what we have.

Holdings API (Data)

There will be a public API that reflects the service as we would like it to be going forward. This will also allow for rapid iteration on the API and client while other parts of the service are being worked on.

It will also allow us to build on any missing parts that we arise through user research as quick wins.

The design and implementation should also be in the shape of what the data team would like to set as the standard for APIs going forward, including logging, monitoring and reporting.

Design

GET /works/{workId}/items

{
  "totalResults": 10,
  "pageSize": 10,
  "totalPages": 1,
  "totalResults": 10,
  "results": [
    {
      "id": "{itemId}",
      "workId": "{workId}",
      "label": "Available",
      "status": "available"
    },
    {
      "id": "{itemId}",
      "workId": "{workId}",
      "label": "Unavailable",
      "status": "unavailable"
    },
    ...
  ]
}

GET /works/{workId}/items/{itemId}

{
  "id": "{itemId}",
  "workId": "{workId}",
  "label": "Available", // TBD: Glossary
  "status": "available" // TBD: Glossary
}

Sierra integration (Preservation)

All requests will have to be updated within Sierra as this is the current system used by library desk staff and people using the library, including services such as "Items previously checked out", "Saved searches", "Saved Lists", and "My bookmarks".

Principles

  • Respect and iterate on the current shape of our data Any client application and API design will be driven by the current shape of the catalogue API, and not other services such as Sierra. This is to allow closer integration of with the API in the future without having to go through large code refactors.

  • Scalability of features The service should be built in such as way that we can add features based on requirements from user research that might not be available from the APIs that we integrate with.

  • Strongly consistent data with Sierra Information displayed to the user will be strongly consistent with Sierra. This will probably mean a lot of synchronous calls to Sierra and waiting for those to complete, but as we have no way of letting a user no something eventually failed, we should avoid this at first.

  • Testable without interrupting current work flows Any requests to the current holdings system on prod can land up with a significant amount fo work being created for library staff. We should make sure our systems accurately reflect the integrations and external APIs, but without creating any overhead for people using the current system.

Alternatives

Accessing the Sierra API and CAS directly

Build a proxy API that talks directly to the Sierra and CAS APIs.

Drawbacks

  • Unable to add or change any feature specific to user requirements

  • Would not conform to the new structure of our catalogue, namely works and items.

--

Unanswered questions

  • Do we just keep using the library application already setup in CAS?

  • Should we use AKKA HTTP for the API?

  • What is acceptable times when waiting on a response from Sierra?

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