The ERCIM Technical Reference Digital Library goes On-line
by Antonella Andreoni, Carlo Carlesi and Pasquale Pagano
One of the declared aims of ERCIM is to advance European research
and development in the areas of information technology and applied
mathematics. It is thus extremely important that results of the
R&D activities carried out at the ERCIM member institutions can
be made immediately available to the interested scientific community
in an easily accessible form. For this reason, ERCIM has set up
a digital library service for the technical reports and other
similar reference material produced by its scientists: the ERCIM
Technical Reference Digital Library (ETRDL). An experimental service
was first set up in 1998 - it is now publicly available.
The ERCIM Technical Reference Digital Library (ETRDL) is a collaborative
activity in which eight organisations (CNR, CWI, GMD, INRIA, SICS,
INESC, SZTAKI, FORTH ) currently participate. It is sponsored
jointly by ERCIM, by the DELOS Working Group (ESPRIT LTR No. 21057),
and by the participating institutions. The objectives of the digital
library service were outlined in Ercim News, No.33, April 1998.
We are happy to announce here that, after a one-year period of
testing and refining the first prototype, ETRDL is now publicly
accessible at http://www.iei.pi.cnr.it/DELOS/ETRDL.
The service runs on an infrastructure based on the DIENST system
(Version 4.1.9) developed by the US Networked Computer Science
Technical Reference Library (NCSTRL) Consortium, which has been
extended by the addition of new functionalities to meet the needs
of the European IT scientific community. These include the adoption
of a common metadata description standard, the introduction of
common classification schemes and methods to manage them, the
implementation of interfaces for languages other than English.
An author submission form has been included to facilitate the
insertion of new documents by the users themselves.
ETRDL is a distributed collection, consisting of the set of the
local collections. These are maintained on the local servers of
each partner institution. This has comported the implementation
of two levels of Home Pages. A centralised access point has been
provided to the system through the DELOS Web site, whereas a local
home page is installed on each local server. The user who accesses
the system through the centralised Home page is directed to select
one of the local servers in order to search the ERCIM DL collection.
Depending on the local server selected, he/she is also given a
choice of language as most local servers will maintain interfaces
in English and in the local language.
The Local Home Page interface caters simultaneously for two user
classes: information seekers and information providers by offering
two main options: search/browse any collection; submit/withdraw
a document to/from a local collection. From the local home pages,
the search and browse functions can be activated over the entire
NCSTRL collection, over the ERCIM collection, or over the collection(s)
of the local institution. In each case, the user is not only accessing
a different collection (or sub-collection), but is provided with
a different perspective on the information, depending on the functions
that have been implemented at that particular level. When searching
on the ERCIM or the local collections, the user can switch between
user interfaces in English or his/own language. On-line helps
in both languages are available.
Adapting an existing system to meet new requirements is rarely
easy. We had to address a number of problems when implementing
the ETRDL. These included the implementation of a powerful search
mechanism which allows the user to perform a simple or a fielded
search throughout the entire library or on selected collections.
Queries can include terms from controlled vocabularies (ACM and
MSC classification schemes) and free keywords. Constraints can
be imposed on the type, date or language of the documents to be
searched.
ETRDL is now active. The next step will be to build up the local
collections. All new technical documentation produced by the eight
ERCIM institutions mentioned above (but hopefully others will
join the activity soon) should be inserted in the library. Institutions
may also consider including their most important past technical
reports (eg from 1990 on); this implies classifying them according
to the ETRDL rules.
In the mean-time, we are working on the development of the next
version of the system (which will include modules to handle multilingual
issues such as mechanisms for the correct search and visualization
of all character sets, the maintenance of separate and linked
indexes to permit the definition of the search language, semi-automatic
procedures to assist authors in document classication, etc.).
In this stage, the feed-back we receive from users will be very
important. So please, try out the system, and send us your comments.
For more information on the ETRDL project and documentation on
the system, see http://www.iei.pi.cnr.it/DELOS/EDL/edl.htm
Please contact:
Stefania Biagioni - IEI-CNR
ETRDL Co-ordinator
Tel: +39 50 593481
E-mail: biagioni@iei.pi.cnr.it
