[ANNOUNCE] Index Morganagus

[morgan at ncsulib5.lib.ncsu.edu]

Please try Index Morganagus, a freetext and field searchable, fulltext
index of 34 library-related electronic serials at:

  http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/~emorgan/morganagus/
  
The Index is a demonstration of the Harvest technology and an
alternative to the collection of electronic serials. Recent publications
have stated that electronic serials are not making an impact on the
scholarly communications process. I believe this to be true because
electronic serials are not indexed and easily accessible. Yes,
electronic serials abound, but no one is going to browse individual
issues for articles of interest. Collections of electronic serials must
be brought together and indexed collectively. Index Morganagus is an
attempt to do just that.

If the Index proves useful, then other indexes can be created for other
disciplines. Once these other indexes are created, they can be combined
with other Harvest indexes. The sum total of these indexes could prove
to be the equivalent of Academic Index while individual indexes could be
the equivalent of publications like Library Literature, Biology
Abstracts, and MLA Bibliography.

If it can be demonstrated to the scholarly community that electronic
publications are a viable means of scholarly communication, then maybe
more scholarly communication will take place through freely available
electronic serials. Index Morganagus is one demonstration of what can be
done.

The Index was created by first using FileMaker Pro to maintain a
database of serials. Records from this database were combined using
relational database techniques to generate descriptions of Harvest
"gatherers" and "brokers." Reports were run against these descriptions
to create Perl scripts. These scripts were then uploaded to the Sunsite
machine where they were executed and thus created real Harvest gatherers
and brokers. Using this model, upkeep of the Index is reduced to
maintaining a valid list of serials. Everything else is done
"automagically."

At the very least, please consider completing the survey found on the
Index's home page. This survey will help determine whether or not to
continue the service beyond Easter '97.

-- 
Eric Lease Morgan
NCSU Libraries
http://www.lib.ncsu.edu/staff/morgan/