Search results

The Institutions of the European Communities produce a number of document‐oriented databases based on publications and documents distributed either by the Office for Official Publications of the European Communities or by the individual EC institutions themselves. These databases are known under the names of ABEL, CATEL, CELEX, CORDIS RTD‐Publications (formerly known as EABS), ECLAS, EPOQUE, EURISTOTE, RAPID and SCAD and are available via hosts such as EUROBASES, ECHO and the Office for Official Publications. Until the establishment of the EUROCAT project, no single database held a comprehensive and complete collection of all European Community documents and publications. This paper describes the approaches and development procedures taken in integrating and harmonising the data from the various databases in order to produce the truly multilingual EUROCAT database using MS‐DOS‐based software. The resulting database will be available on CDROM.

As CD‐ROM becomes more and more a standard reference and technical support tool in all types of libraries, the annual review of this technology published in Computers in Libraries magazine increases in size and scope. This year, author Susan L. Adkins has prepared this exceptionally useful bibliography which she has cross‐referenced with a subject index.

Online & CDROM Review here offers abstracts of the papers presented at the Second Southern African Online Information Meeting, held in Pretoria on 2–4 June 1993. The full Proceedings are published in a special edition of our sister journal, The Electronic Library, August/October 1993, vol. 11, no. 4/5.

The Sixteenth International Online Information Meeting was held in London on 8–10 De‐cember 1992. Here Online & CDROM Review offers the second set of abstracts of selected papers. The first set was published in the February issue of the journal, pp.50–52.

On many occasions when academics have an online search conducted through their libraries they take their printed list of references, for which they have waited patiently for perhaps a week, back to their offices or homes whereupon they will type them all into their microcomputers for local storage using appropriate database management or word‐processing software for the purpose.

Does your library suffer from staff burn‐out? If so, there is help at hand in the form of a recent booklet from the National Youth Bureau. It's called Value judgements: evaluating community based agencies by Warren Feek and Douglas I Smith and has been written to help any organisation avoid a variety of illnesses from the aforementioned staff burn‐out to failed funding applications (Chief Librarians please note!). The booklet shows how you can assess whether your agency is achieving its purpose and whether you have used the right resources in the right way. It's aimed particularly at those working with people in voluntary and statutory youth and community work organisations but it may well be useful to librarians wanting to assess their services, as well as to their clients. The booklet is well illustrated with cartoons and sells at £1.20 inc. p & p from Sales Department, National Youth Bureau, 17–23 Albion Street, Leicester LE1 6GD.

In this article, the fifth in a series on microcomputer software for information storage and retrieval, test results of seven programs are presented and various properties and qualities of these programs are discussed. In this instalment of the series we discuss programs for information storage and retrieval which are primarily characterised by the properties of personal information managers (PIMs), hypertext programs, or best match and ranking retrieval systems. The programs reviewed in this issue are the personal information managers 3by5/RediReference, askSam, Dayflo Tracker, and Ize; Personal Librarian uses best match and ranking; the hypertext programs are Folio Views and the HyperKRS/HyperCard combination (askSam, Ize and Personal Librarian boast hypertext features as well). HyperKRS/HyperCard is only available for the Apple Macintosh. All other programs run under MS‐DOS; versions of Personal Librarian also run under Windows and some other systems. For each of the seven programs about 100 facts and test results are tabulated. The programs are also discussed individually.

This article lists and compares specifications, properties, and test results of microcomputer software for information storage and retrieval. Nine different programs which fall into the category of classical retrieval systems (see Part I of this series) have been tested and assessed: BIB/SEARCH, CARDBOX‐PLUS, CDS/ISIS, FREEBASE, HEADFAST, IDEALIST, INMAGIC, NUTSHELL‐PLUS, and POLYDOC. All of them run under MS‐DOS. For each of these nine programs about 100 facts and test results are tabulated. Each program is also discussed individually.

The following bibliography focuses mainly on programs which can run on IBM microcomputers and compatibles under the operating system PC DOS/MS DOS, and which can be used in online information and documentation work. They fall into the following categories:

Criteria to evaluate and select software for online text information storage and retrieval software are presented in the form of a checklist. The list has a hierarchical structure; the headings are Input of information, Indexing, Interactive searching for information, and Output features, with, additionally, a few remarks about Current awareness, Security/Privacy/Authorisation, Read‐only version, and Integration with other programs.