Search Apps thru Web - Was Re: Reset Netscape to HomePa

[Peter C. Gorman]

Folks -

>Our intention here is to have the WWW page available on the internet,
>but the access to our CDs will be from our campus only.  I plan to
>designate our CD applications as helper apps within Netscape.

We're doing this in a big way (over 100 databases, mostly CD-ROM); we just
rolled it out a couple of weeks ago. Look at:

http://www.library.wisc.edu/

Then, look under 'Resources in the Electronic Library'.

The most contentious issues were not technical ones, but rather how to let
users know which databases aren't remotely accessible and why, but not let
the messages slow down users who do have access. Feel free to contact us if
you run into any problems; we may have had similar experiences. The two
tools that helped us the most were W3Launch (for launching the local CD
search engines) and WinBatch (for setting up and controlling the
environment on the library workstations).

We have the same approach mentioned in the couple of previous messages - to
have one set of menus for all users, even if not all of the resources can
be used from everywhere. All of them can, though, be used from machines in
any of our 30+ libraries. Our in-house LANs are based on Novell 3.11, and
our client machines (~500) are mainly Windows 3.1 with a couple of dozen
Macintoshes.

One of the nice lessons we learned from this project is that committees can
do useful work! :-) There were over half a dozen committees involved in
various aspects of the project, from identifying technical problems to
building consensus on the design.

Hope this helps,

______________________________________________
Peter C. Gorman
University of Wisconsin General Library System
312F Memorial Library
728 State St.
Madison, WI 53706
pcgorman at facstaff.wisc.edu