Ann Apps

Prototyping Digital Library Technologies in zetoc

zetoc is a current awareness and document delivery service providing World Wide Web and Z39.50 access to the British Librarys Electronic Table of Contents database of journal articles and conference papers, along with an email alerting service. An experimental prototype version of zetoc is under development, based on open standards, including Dublin Core and XML, and using the open source, leading-edge Cheshire II information retrieval technology. Enhancements investigated in this prototype include request and delivery of discovered articles, location of electronic articles using OpenURL technology, and additional current awareness functionality including the exposure of journal issue metadata according to the Open Archives Initiative protocol. These experimental developments will enhance the zetoc service to improve the information environment for researchers and learners.

zetoc SOAP: A Web Services Interface for a Digital Library Resource

This paper describes the provision of a Web Services interface that will extend the possibility of machine-to-machine access to the zetoc current awareness service, within the JISC Information Environment and eScience applications. This bespoke interface includes open standard XML metadata for searches and responses where possible. Elements from the OpenURL XML metadata formats for journals and books are used to transmit the bibliographic citation information that is an integral part of a zetoc record for a journal article or conference paper.

Dublin Core Metadata for Electronic Journals

This paper describes the design of an electronic journals application where the article header information is held as Dublin Core metadata. Current best practice in the use of Dublin Core for bibliographic data description is indicated where this differs from pragmatic decisions made when the application was designed. Using this working application as a case study to explore the specification of a metadata schema to describe bibliographic data indicates that the use of Dublin Core metadata is viable within the journals publishing sector, albeit with the addition of some local, domain-specific extensions.

Towards an Integrated Digital Library; Exploration of User Responses to a `Joined-Up' Service

Digital library users have to deal with many separate services. This paper describes efforts in the United Kingdom to use OpenURL technology to provide ‘joined-up’ services. The focus is on zetoc, a national electronic service, which enables users to find references in a British Library bibliographic database. zetoc now uses OpenURL technology to provide routes to services, which might give users access to electronic full text versions of references they have found. Data is provided from two questionnaire surveys and an interview programme conducted to explore user responses to these services. These evaluation studies show that users want these integrated services and are extremely positive about them when they work. However, ‘joined-up’ services depend for their success on the access rights that each user has to full text sources in their institution. As a result, the success level in obtaining full text varies considerably between institutions. Users in disadvantageous positions have expressed disappointment and frustration; the service may be regarded as a promise not fulfilled. The paper describes the development of ‘joined-up services’ as a partnership at national and local levels.

Facts and Myths of Browsing and Searching in a Digital Library

In recent times, there has been increased interest in the querying of digital libraries (DLs). This is due in part to the development of the WWW, which enables easy access to both centralised and distributed digital library sources. The majority of published works on querying DLs are associated with information retrieval (IR), also known as digital querying. Information retrieval techniques are popular with querying DLs due to their flexibility in querying semi-structured data. In contrast, database querying of DLs has been largely ignored until only recent years. The key aspects of database querying of DLs involve the integration of database querying with browsing or navigating techniques to query semi-structured data. Our interest lies in developing the relatively limited database query facilities currently available to users of DLs, and a key stage in this process is to define what kinds of searching and browsing typical users would like to perform.