Search

Structured text, such as journal articles in SGML, does not lend itself to the tabular format that relational database management systems (RDBMS) require. For this reason it has required special-purpose retrieval engines. The wide acceptance and growing capabilities of RDBMS prompted this investigation of how and when they could be employed for structured text. This investigation resulted in a research prototype called STORD which demonstrates an architecture for full-text retrieval using relational databases.

OCLC offers Electronic Journals Online, a service which provides access to electronic journals and high-quality display of text and graphics. The primary method of searching and displaying articles is through a proprietary client called Guidon, which is programmed in C++ and runs under MS Windows and on the Macintosh. The advent of Java support within World Wide Web browsers offers the possibility of re-implementing the features of Guidon in Java applets. This would enable OCLC to offer access to our existing databases without requiring users to load specialized software. As a research project we developed a prototype version of a document viewer in Java.

Web browsers have become the method of choice for access to bibliographic databases, almost entirely replacing proprietary clients for new end-user systems. Going one step further and programming the client in Java to run within the browser, rather than relying entirely on HTML, opens up a new level of functionality. SecondSearch is an experimental system under development to explore both performance and functionality issues of this approach. It uses a tree structure to display a hierarchical view of records, giving the user the ability to zoom in and out of sections of the selected databases. The system is designed to be scalable to thousands of users browsing and searching hundreds of millions of records. A major challenge has been to create an interface that is simple, powerful, does not place an exorbitant load on the server, and is suitable for dozens of databases, each containing millions of records.

Guidon is OCLC's graphical interface to Electronic Journals Online. The World Wide Web (WWW) is a system that OCLC and many other institutions use to offer services over the Internet. We have extended a prototype version of Guidon so that it can display Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) documents and function as a WWW browser. In addition to letting Guidon view Web pages, HTML offers several powerful features that could be integrated into OCLC's electronic journal services, such as a flexible forms capability.

The use of the DDC in metadata offers unique opportunities for organizing and searching Web resources. In this paper, we describe CORC tools for applying and using the DDC as a metadata element. Both the CORC system and the DDC are benefiting from the inclusion of Dewey in the CORC project. CORC benefits from having integrated access to a rich classification system that can be used to organize its metadata; the DDC benefits from its inclusion in an easily adaptable Web-based system that facilitates the exploration of what a classification system can do in this new environment.

The OCLC CORC-Cooperative Online Resource Catalog-project is a new research project to explore the cooperative creation of a catalog of Internet resources. The catalog is being designed to support both US MARC and less formal metadata. In addition to supporting conventional searching, the catalog design will allow dynamic generation of Web pages with resources organized appropriately for integration with libraries' portal pages-Web pages that provide a set of useful links to other places on the Web. At OCLC, we believe libraries need a shared system to help with link selection, link maintenance, resource descriptions and the creation of pages based on this information. This is what CORC is being designed to provide.