[WEB4LIB] Cd Launch from Web Browser

[Gary E. Masters]

Sarah:

I am very interested in how you work out a solution to this problem.  We
had a CD tower that crashed a lot, so I got a really big Dell NetWare
server (nearly 100 gb of hard disk space) and now put the Cd's in volumes
in Netware.  However, we run out of drive letters.  I am trying to learn
how to use the Application Launcher that Novell provides with a product
called Z.E.N. (zero effort networking - if you can believe that) to launch
the CD, map dirve (or dirves) and unmap when finished.  That has been slow.
 The Head of Public services wants a menu  for the reference workstations
and the Library Director has suggested that we make it a web page.  
So, if there are other ways - like putting UNC on the web page and not even
using a drive letter, that would be nice.  Our problem with that is many of
the programs we use (Silver Platter, UMI, or such) do not work with the
UNC.  At least not in the DOS versions that we are required to use.  

Suggestions?

Thanks,

Gary Masters






At 10:05 AM 5/26/99 -0700, you wrote:
>I'm new to this list and I would like some help with a launching CD's from
>a web browser (we're using Netscape 4.05). We are currently using Carl
>Everybody's Menu to provide integrated access to our telnet catalog,
>CD-ROMs and web resources. We're moving to a web catalog next December,
>and are thinking about getting rid of Carl for a variety of reasons. Most
>of our CD's are launched right now through Carl using a UNC address for
>each CD that looks something like this:
>\\polk1\software\spirs\winspirs.exe i: Each CD is mapped to a different
>drive letter. They are not standard paths, e.g.
>c:\progra~1\newsba~2\newsbank.exe We are in a Windows 95/Novell Netware
>environment. Any pearls of wisdom about the latest and greatest ways to
>launch CD's from a browser? I'd even be curious about ways to launch CD's
>with "normal" paths. Searched through the archives, but couldn't find what
>I was looking for, or maybe I missed it. TIA- Sarah
>
>Sarah Neises
>Polk Library
>University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
>neises at uwosh.edu
>http://www.uwosh.edu/library/
>
>
>
>
>
Gary E. Masters
Automated Services Librarian
Texas A&M International University
(956) 326-2137 (voice)
(956) 326-2399 (fax)