IUG meeting proposed discussion

[Linda Bills <lbills@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I would be interested in meeting (perhaps as a Birds of a Feather) 
with a small group of people to talk about how the catalogs we have 
on III can be used as databases of URLS to be used in our webpages. 
I would like to see if we can come up with definitive needs that 
could be discussed with III as a suggestion for product development 
that would have a market -- something that there is enough agreement 
on that they would find it attractive to develope.  (I have already 
presented my ideas on this subject to III, and I am interested to see 
if there are other, better ways to do this, or other ways we can 
leverage our existing III database.  Here is the basic theme I am 
working with (stop here if you don't like essays).

We catalog all of our paid web resources and many free resources on 
our III database.  We also have links to these resources, in many 
cases, from various more narrative webpages -- and given that we are 
a consortium, there may be 3 or more links to the same resource. 
Naturally it has occured to us how efficient it would be if we could 
maintain the URL only in the III database and somehow pluck it from 
III into our webpages as needed.

Right now we accomplish this by having our webpage URLs go to our III 
bib record, from which the user clicks the 856-produced link.  It's 
good for upkeep but a bit confusing for the user.  We would also like 
to be able to construct more tailored dynamic webpages (a la Cold 
Fusion type stuff) using our III database of websites instead of 
having to transfer info from there to another database for a 
web-based application.  The basic model here is what CORC is doing 
with their database + Pathfinders, but on a local level.  We have the 
database, we maintain it on the III system for its value as part of 
our catalog; we would like to leverage that if we can.

We see several possibilities here -- that III could develop 
something, or that we could use other products like Cold Fusion, or 
CORC.  That we could transfer records around.... We do not have any 
programming resources in our Consortium that could be easily 
commandeered to do intensive local development.

So, I would like to do a reality check with others who are working in 
this area to see what's out there and how people are working with it.

Please let me know if you are interested.

Thanks,

Linda
Linda G. Bills           Tri-College Library Automation Coordinator
lbills@xxxxxxxxxx      Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges
(610) 526-5294           Canaday Library, Bryn Mawr College
(610) 526-7480 fax       101 N. Merion Ave.
                          Bryn Mawr, PA  19010