14 Libraries And WWW

• Example Of A Gateway To A Library Catalogue
• Resources
• Finding Out More

Example Of A Gateway To A Library Catalogue

In the UK many university library catalogues are held in proprietary systems with old-fashioned user interfaces. It may be possible, however, to use WWW to provide an interface to the library catalogue which is consistent with other information services on WWW. At the University of Leeds a backup copy of the library catalogue is kept on a central Unix system using the BRS free text retrieval system. A gateway program, has been developed by Terry Screeton, Computing Service which provides access to the Library catalogue. This gateway is available at the URL http://www.leeds.ac.uk/library/cats/backup.html

Figure 14-1 Gateway To A Library Catalogue.

In Figure 14-1 a form is completed. The term Internet is used as a search term. Once the form is submitted the data is sent to a CGI program. In this case the CGI program is a C program which invokes the BRS free text retrieval system. The output from the BRS program is then processed to generate the appropriate HTML markup. The output from the search is illustrated in Figure 14-2.

Figure 14-2 Output From The Library Catalogue.

Resources

SALSER is an online information service about serials held in Scottish academic and research libraries. It can be accessed at the URL http://salser.ed.ac.uk/

The Clearinghouse for subject-oriented Internet resource guides is available at the URL http://http2.sils.umich.edu/~lou/chhome.html

The EINet Galaxy collection of online resources is available at http://galaxy.einet.net/galaxy.html

The CERN Virtual Library is available at the URL http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/DataSources/bySubject/Overview.html

The Boulder Community Network service is available at the URL http://bcn.boulder.co.us/ Its policy statement is available at the URL http://bcn.boulder.co.us/bcn/policy.html The policy statement includes a bill of rights, a freedom to read statement and a freedom to view statment.

A list of Innovative Internet Applications in Libraries is available at the URL http://frank.mtsu.edu/~kmiddlet/libweb/innovate.html

The following Library resources may also prove useful:

• http://www.lib.washington.edu/~tdowling/libweb.html

• http://www.library.nwu.edu/resources/library/

• http://www.rutgers.edu/lawschool.html

• http://badger.state.wi.us:/00/agencies/dpi/www/pi_home.html

• http://www.yahoo.com/Reference/Libraries

• http://cyclops.idbsu.edu/

• http://www.loc.gov/

• http://alpha.acast.nova.edu/hytelnet.html

• http://www.arcade.uiowa.edu/arcade-www/gateway/search/library.html

Web4Lib is a mailing list aimed at library-based WWW managers and developers. To subscribe to the list email listserv@library.berkeley.edu with the message SUBSCRIBE Web4Lib yourname.

Eric Morgan's article on Libraries and the Web in Public Access Computer Systems Review, 5(6) 1994:5-26 is available at the URL http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/staff/morgan/www-and-libraries.html