Message-Id: <199602090602.AAA13267@library.wustl.edu> Date: Fri, 9 Feb 1996 16:57:59 +1100 From: Tony Barry <mailto:tony@INFO.ANU.EDU.AU> Subject: Re: URLs To: Multiple recipients of list WEBCAT-L <mailto:WEBCAT-L@WUVMD.WUSTL.EDU>
At 14:41 96/02/09, Donald J. Reilly wrote: >without knowing the internal workings of that vendor's system. But does
>it make
> any sense,
>when most vendors have a Web product and most people buy the Web product from
> the same
>vendor as the one automating their library?
Its pretty daft if they do after all there are free clients and a choice of commercial ones. as well as gateays to the web. If you want connectivity out across a campus you can't afford a client for everybody and falling back to a clunky telnet interface would be a backward step.
> Z39.50 has some inherent
> limitations, like it's
>inability to deal with circulation information (I understand that this is being
> addressed, but there
>are other limitations as well). It has been our approach that a web product
> that understands and
>interprets Voyager data is in a better position to robustly put that
>information
> on the Web, than
>one that tries to do it in a generic, least-common-denominator approach like
> Z39.50. We are
>providing a Web interface to the OPAC that is designed to be every bit as
> functional as the
>Windows OPAC. When we deal with serials data and acquisitions data and other
> pieces,
This is only important if you if you want to do database things with this information. If you just want to display it it should work OK. Add html to the opac and you might have a whole new ball game combining the power of z39.50 for retrieval with with html for display. I hear Netscape is looking at a z39.50 addon which could open things up a bit.
Tony
__________________________________________________________________________ Tony Barry URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html Centre for Networked Information and Publishing & also Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information fone +61 6 249 4632 Australian National University Library phax +61 6 279 8120 Canberra A.C.T. 0200, AUSTRALIA mailto:Tony.Barry@library.anu.edu.au