NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol

NCIP stands for National Information Standards Organisation Circulation Interchange Part I Protocol.

http://www.niso.org/standards/standard_detail.cfm?std_id=728

It is a standard related to Integrated Library Systems.

It could also be referred to (though isn't to this editor's knowledge) as Z39.83.

It is a protocol, like HTTP, which you're using right now to read this.

There is an entire page within the PDF of related standards.

NCIP has only been kicking around since trial in 2001 and was approved in 2002, so if you feel like this is a newfangled thing, it is. It's worth taking a look at the voting members on this project; this is so in especial when one considers the mergers that have occurred since.

Basically, current Library catalogues don't necessarily play nicely with one another thanks to a proliferation of proprietary commercial software.

Since the bulk of vendors independently developed their own flavour of catalogue, when a Librarian or Patron attempted to request materials from someplace else through ILL or another means, data might not have been in the correct form to ease the process.

Self checkout only threw a further wrench in the works.

Librarians and Patrons needed a way to request an item whenever they felt like it and attach that item to a Patron record.

This standard seeks to ensure that folks follow a given set of rules when developing their products to ensure that information transfer between my catalogue and yours can happen.

Sounds simple enough.

Until you consider that folks like having their data private. So, enter authentication.

Also, all of the problems inherent to one Library dealing with a single transaction now relate to all. (I catalogue an item in my home network. The data updates that I own it. Allowing a Patron someplace else to request my new item. But what about my Library's ILL rules? My Consortium? My State's Delivery network? So each of these questions has been addressed within the creation of the standard. The degree of freedom each Library wants results in the standard being deliciously complex.)

Since technology changes, and the way we handle our data evolves, the Standard is currently under revision. CIP2 is in the works.