Library Web Services

  • Web services are self-contained, modular, distributed, dynamic applications that can be described, published, located, or invoked over the network to create products, processes, and supply chains. These applications can be local, distributed, or web-based. Web services are built on top of open standards such as TCP/IP, HTTP, Java, HTML, and XML.
  • Web services provide mechanisms that allow libraries to expand their services in many important ways.”—Marshall Breeding, “Web Services and the Service-Oriented Architecture.”
  • A library website provides a library with a website to offer its services and to tell its story to its community.