Yes, you get it right, it is a web service and it is with Singapore National Library Board (NLB), and it has been successfully integrated nicely with BookJetty for slightly over a week in stealth mode, and today after it is more or less stable, I can finally announce it.

This is probably one of first integration using web service with a public sector in Singapore. In anyway, it’s a new beginning, which I hope this will lead to more of amazing stuff that will benefit many when more organisations be it public or private starts to open up their non-sensitive data through an Application Programming Interface (API).

I am glad that today has finally come, before, BookJetty has been slogging through the hard way, using screen scrapping and session pooling, with worries that the service can easily break with a small change in the library online catalog, scalability issue due to sessions maintenance, and worse, blocked.

Today, those worries should not no longer be there, it definitely makes day, and the day for all the BookJetty users in Singapore.

Many thanks to Singapore NLB for taking this initiative, special thanks to Jamieson Teo who helped to advocate and facilitate this integration, and to Ling Xia, for her fast and excellent support during the integration phase, and finally to the management for giving the green light.

My warmest gratitude to all.