telnet indexes -- keep 'em or ditch 'em?

[Mr. Edward Spodick]

On Sat, 23 Aug 1997, Walt Howe wrote:

> At 02:50 PM 8/23/1997 -0700, Jim Stemper wrote:
> >- does it cost more from our vendors to offer users both web and telnet
> >indexes? (ie, will IAC charge us for both?  I have not yet been able to get
> >an answer to that around here... >:-|  )
> >- do ref staff want to (potentially) be prepared to teach 2 versions of the
> >same thing?
> >- do auto sys staff want to support 2 versions?
> >- does the telnet version offer features not offered in the web version?
> >(we're still not sure if anything is missing in FirstSearch web)
> 
> The answer to your questions is pretty clearly YES, NO, NO, NO. My

I have to disagree on that last NO.  For us, the telnet version offers
significant advantages over the web version for our OPAC.  Most of these
advantages will disappear as the web version improves.  The biggest 
problem will take more effort, as it involves the correct display of
Chinese characters using EACC/CCCII encodings.  We have a very nice
interface running for our telnet users which allows them to see many more
characters than our web users are able to see.  This is especially true
in the Windows95 environment, where there is almost no software available
which does more than Big5 and GB.  I could go into great detail regarding
software we have investigated, mapping of characters between different
character sets, making sure the user can see something 'legible', even
if it is not the actual character used on the item (certainly not
desireable), etc.  

Web interfaces are great, but they are certainly not replacements for all
institutions.

Edward Spodick, Systems Librarian, Hong Kong University of Science &
Technology

- - I do not speak officially for HKUST - -