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"Summon Search API uses an authentication scheme based on secret key verification via an HMAC-SHA1 digest. The API performs both authentication and authorization via the same HTTP Authorization header. Creating an Authorization header for an API request requires an access ID, a paired secret key, a client key, and access to certain elements of the HTTP request being authenticated. To create the Authorization header, specific request elements must be assembled into a string that uniquely identifies the request. This ID string is then turned into a digest using the HMAC-SHA1 algorithm as defined in RFC 2104. The digest is then Base64-encoded according to RFC 2045, and assembled into a header along with the access ID. When the API server receives a request, the first thing it does is check the x-summon-date header to make sure it is within a reasonable margin of the server time. If the header time is not within one hour of the server time then authentication fails immediately. If the request timestamp is acceptable, then the server goes on to check that Summon authentication is being used in the Authorization header. If Summon authentication is being used, the server extracts the access ID, client key and encoded authentication digest from the Authorization header, and looks up the paired secret key using the access ID. Finally the server performs the same algorithm described in the previous paragraph to produce a test digest, and compares the test digest against the digest provided in the Authorization header. If the two digests are identical, the request is authenticated."

" VuFind is a library resource portal designed and developed for libraries by libraries. The goal of VuFind is to enable your users to search and browse through all of your library's resources by replacing the traditional OPAC to include: * Catalog Records * Locally Cached Journals * Digital Library Items * Institutional Repository * Institutional Bibliography * Other Library Collections and Resources VuFind is completely modular so you can implement just the basic system, or all of the components. And since it's open source, you can modify the modules to best fit your need or you can add new modules to extend your resource offerings. VuFind has many APIs to interact with the search, data and many other features. You can syndicate your record data with other institutions via an OAI server. You can search using vufind's algorithms via OpenSearch. And if you want complete access to your indexed data, you can interact with Solr, VuFind's backend search and index engine."

This article will explore the space between Summon's out-of-the-box user interface and full developer API, providing practical advice on tweaking configuration information and catalog exports to take full advantage of Summon's indexing and faceting features. The article then describes the creation of OSUL's home-grown open source availability service which replaced and enhanced the availability information that Summon would normally pull directly from the catalog.

"We learned that they've turned on a new back end that greatly increases the speed of the product, with 80% of all searches being fully returned in 1 second or less. Go ahead and try it with the U of Calgary implementation. Don't like a hosted URL? Check out what the U of Virgina has done with the Summon API for their mobile interface! There's a lot of long-tail stuff out there. One of the content managers pointed out that the average academic library holds 24% of Ulrich's Core Journals, and Summon has 40%. I'm really revitalized over this project, and will be heading back to Calgary with an aim towards cleaning up our metadata in order to really leverage Summon. Lots of good stuff coming in the next few months."

"An API for effective interoperation between integrated library systems and external discovery applications"

* Encore Discovery * Encore Harvesting Services * Encore Query API * Encore Reporter

"We recently had a visit from Serials Solutions staff to talk about Summon. We are currently running an Endeca based catalog we call Mango for 11 State University Libraries. We were told that there are a couple of options for implementing Summon, one is to switch to their interface and use it as your whole catalog, with articles metadata integrated into your search results. The other option is to use their API to integrate the article searching into your next-gen catalog."