Main -> Support Zone -> InSite Archives -> September Front Page |
InSite The Monthly Newsletter for Open SiteSearch Users |
September 1999, vol.2 no.5 |
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OCLC SITESEARCH 4.1 TO BE RELEASED SEPT. 20
DUBLIN, OH - OCLC is pleased to announce that Open SiteSearch 4.1 is on schedule and will be released September 20th for the Unix and NT operating systems. Updates to the documentation will be released on September 20th as well. Training on SiteSearch 4.1 begins this week, August 23rd. If you would like information on upcoming training dates and seat availability starting with the session offered in September, please contact Becky Hawk, Product Support Coordinator, at or 1-. If you need additional information about the SiteSearch 4.1 software, please contact Kara Byerly, Manager of User Services, at or extension 6402. |
OCLC's Z39.50
Harvest |
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Late summer recedes into autumn -- harvesting time for many crops here in the midwest. While family farms harvest the last of the corn and soybeans, OCLC has been hard at work, too, testing Z39.50 servers. New vendors have entered the field, or announced their intentions and other vendors have upgraded functionality/Z-compliance. OCLC is constantly looking to stay current with these developments and make configuration files available for our users. The vendors we approached for testing are listed at the right. In some cases, the z-servers were still under development and not yet available for testing. In other cases, vendors did not respond to OCLC's requests for connection information. In most cases we were able to size up the servers. For suggestions on how you can help with the project, see the bottom of the sidebar. OCLC conducted all of its testing with zclient, the simple command driven Z39.50 client bundled with the Open SiteSearch software. We tested for Z39.50 attributes and behaviors of vendor servers, how well they met or exceeded vendor claims and how well they fulfilled basic and advanced searching requirements.
To test for searching requirements, OCLC borrowed from the searching profile written by TZIG -- the Texas Z39.50 Implementors Group. These requirements set the criteria for handling common first level searching -- that patrons would commonly use -- and second level searching -- that catalogers would commonly use. The original paper is available here.
First level searching
supports:
Second level searching supports:
The form developed for recorded results is available here. Use it as
you like. We welcome any comments. With SiteSearch 4.1, we are adding the ability to configure additional Z39.50 attributes on a per database, per index basis. This additional functionality will aid in searching problems reported to the Product Support by SiteSearch users. Based on our tests, the following servers will benefit notably with these changes: NOTE: Since many servers still do not support additional Z39.50 attributes, including these fields in the corresponding configuration files may adversely affect searching (i.e., your results may vary). Ameritech Dynix III Sirsi |
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