At the University of Utah Libraries, we have created a new system to manage the titles (books & DVDs) published by the University Press and replaced the legacy system. The publishing, distribution, and sales of the titles are handled by an outside vendor and the books are managed in their Title Management System. Previously University Press has been duplicating the information on its local website. The Software Development Unit at the library developed a website using WordPress to host the title information locally. The WordPress site automatically consumes a data export from the publisher and populates the information in WordPress. The data is received in XML-based ONIX (ONline Information eXchange) format. The ONIX file is logically processed into WordPress and information is passed into a series of custom fields, and the titles are presented as a title galley with the use of a custom theme. The new workflow built on WordPress allowed the University Press to have a fully autonomous site powered by the data from publisher’s system, resulting in minimum overhead.
September 23, 2017