Study of Message Text Formats: Bibliographic Search Queries.

This report presents an analysis of the search query arguments of several major bibliographic utilities and shows the commonalities and differences of the query structure among the various systems. The report illustrates a symbolic metalanguage that was developed to describe and compare the search arguments. In addition, status and error messages used in conjunction with search queries that should be incorporated in the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science (NCLIS) National Bureau of Standards (NBS) Applications Level Protocol are specified. The report recommends that certain search argument formats be standardized for computer-to-computer communications and that more work be performed in the analysis of bibliographic response formats on the various systems. Data about the following systems are included: the Library of Congress, the National Library of Medicine, OCLC, the University of Chicago, the Washington Library Network, Northwestern University, and the Research Libraries Information Network. (Author/FM)