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Web Systems



Hi,

I am not completely sure what the requirements are for inclusion of 
a project into the OSS Project or what interest there would be in 
some of the work that I am doing. 

Let me tell you about it and you can tell me whether there is any 
interest :-)

We have a problem (isn't that the start of all developments <g>) 
with the flood of Electronic Journals. This has caught up to us now 
with one particular publisher telling us that for the cost of the 7 print 
journals that we subscribe to, we can get access to something like 
700 of their journals, full-text, online. This is just one of the many .. 

What we need to do is to make these journals accessable to our 
user community. The immeadiate reaction was simply to provide a 
long list of the journals and their URLS on a web page. (not MY 
reaction...) There are a number of problems with this approach.. 
firstly, for some of the journals there is a UserName and Password 
requirement.. which we would NOT want to publish generally on the 
Net.

The other problem is the constant updating of the information that 
is required ie the fact that the info on what journals are available, 
what the URL is, what the connection information is etc. And if this 
has to be updated by editing Web Pages, then this is never going 
to occur.. 

My solution (and all I have is a prototype) is to create an MS 
ACCESS database to hold the journal information (and Publisher 
and Agent) and write two different things. One is a Web 
Component that runs on the NT (IIS4) machine and provides the 
data. how this works is that the "Web Committee" here simply has 
to learn (copy-paste) the 2 lines of ASP code needed to put the 
data into the web pages that they are responsible for. My 
department (Computer Department of the Library -- and at this 
stage  JUST me ) is responsible for the data access side within the 
web component.

I have developed the basics of this component, and at this stage it 
works (in my test envirionment <g>) along with a few ASP pages 
that are required. 

In order to do the updating of the data, I am in the process of 
writing a VB App that will communicate with the server to allow 
this. I m still involved in trying to understand the complexities of 
RDS/ADO but I am getting there.. 

This Serials part of the project is the part that is of immeadiate 
concern. There are a LOT of other aspects of the "Virtual Library" 
that I intend to include in this project before I am done. Those 
things will come with time. 

If there is anyone who is interested in this, then I would be happy 
to share the code etc.. What I am most interested in is comment 
on the ideas and possible collaboration with others who might be 
interested in this as a project... 

Hope this is of interest..

SeeYa

John


---
John Dovey
Head Library Computer Dept      Senior Software Specialist    
Email: pjcd@maties.sun.ac.za       J.S. Gericke Library          
Phone:021-8084100 (w)           University of Stellenbosch,   
      021-8632471 (H)          

For my always up-to-date contact information, click here:
http://www.planetall.com/main.asp?cid=3758583
                               
PGP Key Info
 pub  1024/5C629B3D 1997/03/13 John Dovey <pjcd@bib.sun.ac.za>
          Key fingerprint =  E9 5B 15 9F D9 0C 63 4F  59 A5 34 D4 2D 86 09 1D

Thought for the day:
When you are about to do an objective and scientific piece of
investigation of a topic, it is well to gave the answer firmly in hand,
so that you can proceed forthrightly, without being deflected or
swayed, directly to the goal.
      --- Amrom Katz


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