Z39.50: what to ask vendors

[KAREN SCHNEIDER]

I appreciate all of the information I received for my column on Z39.50
for American Libraries, particularly those of you who reviewed and
commented on early drafts of my article.  I persuaded my editor that this
should be a two-part series, so I am now regrouping to write a second
column which will bring up some of the potential problems libraries
could run into with Z39.50 and suggest some questions to pose to
vendors as we evaluate products that claim to be Z39.50 clients or
servers or are databases that are supposedly Z39.50 "compliant."  (Note
the quotation marks--I'm discovering that Z39.50 is not the easy
one-size-fits-all standard!)

I'd love to hear lessons learned, hot tips and guidance from librarians and
vendors alike.  You can email me at schneider.karen at epamail.epa.gov or
kgs at bluehighways.com ...  Thanks in advance!

On a related note, after researching GILS I reread a Robert Fulghum story
about a family that tells a little girl that a guinea pig is actually a dog.  It
suited everyone's needs, and even when the little girl got older and
realized what the "dog" really was, she played along with the pretense. I
feel that way about GILS, particularly when I read heated articles in the
government-computer press about Z39.50 "versus" GILS.  I sense the
easiest way to implement a Z39.50 project where I am is to justify the
need for a "GILS server" (aka a Z39.50 server that understands a GILS
record).  As long as we all call it a GILS server, we should be o.k... 

Karen G. Schneider
Region 2 NY EPA Library
schneider.karen at epamail.epa.gov
Opinions mine alone