I’ve spent a lot of time recently trying to make various library services play nicely with each other. I’ve had some success, but also can end up quite frustrated when a vendor doesn’t make the task easy.
Just a few years ago, some of these connections would have required entire departments of coders to get the job done. Today, very often one worker can figure it out. Library budgets and resources for these projects can be a bit limited, but now that doesn’t matter nearly as much – the doors are open to vast new areas.
Still, I’ve had to learn a lot of my knowledge in this area by trial and error. Do any library schools offer a class in this area? Hands-on experience with SOAP requests, XML, even simply how to hack apart and recombine a url for search plugins – all this should be covered.