CDA Oral Arguments: Filtering the OPAC

[Jon Knight]

On Wed, 26 Mar 1997, Rich Greenfield wrote:
> Mr. Waxman, Deputy Solicitor General
> [...] 
>      Now, the definition, the accepted definition of what is patently offensive,
> that is a term of art. It is very narrow, and it is exceedingly difficult to see how
> it would apply to more than a handful of cards in a card catalogue, but to the
> extent that it does, you can simply run it through some sort of word processor
> or computer program to screen -- it's only text, after all, on cards, and if you
> find a card that -- 

I have a sneaky feeling that most libraries already have what was once
their card catalogues online and in many cases the cards don't exist
anymore (and haven't for some time).  I certainly wouldn't want to suck
out our 500,000+ works from the relation database that underlies our OPAC
and then "simply run it through some sort of word processor". :-)

Thank goodness I'm on this side of the Atlantic for once.

Tatty bye,

Jim'll

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Jon "Jim'll" Knight, Researcher, Sysop and General Dogsbody, Dept. Computer
Studies, Loughborough University of Technology, Leics., ENGLAND.  LE11 3TU.
* I've found I now dream in Perl.  More worryingly, I enjoy those dreams. *