[WEB4LIB] MicroTest

[Charles P. Hobbs]

On Thu, 10 Dec 1998, Barbara A Parker wrote:

> 
> We are in the process of replacing our cd rom server.  What we want to
> offer our users is point-and-click access from our Web page to our
> networked cd products.  We also want a user interface that will collect
> statistics and work with licensing restrictions, etc.

We at King Drew Health Science Library
(http://www.cdrewu.edu/kdhsl/lib_home.htm) are thinking about the same
thing.

If you just want access from within the library, w3launch will do the job.
(I found w3launch occasionally difficult to configure, though). Although
w3launch itself doesn't collect any statistics, conceivably one could,
through using batch files, set up a logging program.

However, if you want people to be able to access the CD-rom's over the
internet, the problem is much more involved. We've used Citrix
(http://www.citrix.com) Winframe in the past to do this (not via the Net,
but via dialup). Supposedly they're working on a Net-based version,
requiring users to install a special browser plug-in. This is also
something we're considering installing, as we still have our Citrix server
and CD Towers (in disuse since we switched to web-based databases last
summer).