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With two official standards available for requesting an item, a rather confusing picture arises when planning the automation of interlibrary loan and document delivery facilities for libraries, commercial document suppliers, and patrons. Which standard should be implemented: the ILL Protocol or Z39.50 Extended Services for Item Order? There was substantial concern within the ISO community that Item Order was moving into a domain already covered by the ILL protocol standard and that these two standards would be competing. Even though there is an overlap in the functions these standards perform, they are unique and meet different operational requirements. In a distributed communications environment, they can be used to complement rather than compete with each other.

Z39.50 and (to a slightly lesser extent) SR, seem to be difficult terms to escape these days in the library world. They have of course been discussed in the library IT world for some years. It is likely that by now most members of the profession will at least have heard of the existence of Z39.50/SR, even if they do not understand its technical detail, which is usually unnecessary in any case. It is the intention of this overview to offer some background information and explanation for those still wondering what the fuss is all about; highlight some current issues with implications for libraries; and finally provide a report on what stage the library system suppliers have reached in their efforts to keep up with (or lead?) developments and implement Z39.50/SR.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the Illinois LSTA grant‐funded project, “Yellow Brick Roads: Building a Digital Shortcut to Statewide Information”. The project investigated the feasibility of unified searching across library holdings, digitization projects, and online state government information through use of the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI‐PMH) in tandem with the Z39.50 protocol through application of the Z39.50/OAI Gateway Profile.

The project proceeded through the construction of a metasearch service model based on the Z39.50/OAI Gateway Profile. Technical obstacles encountered during the construction of this demonstration service were noted, as were potential solutions. The evaluation of the Z39.50/OAI harvesting component of the Gateway Profile was conducted by means of a questionnaire of vendors providing Z39.50 servers to the Illinois Regional Library Systems.

The established technology platform provided by the University of Illinois Open Archives Initiative (OAI) Metadata Harvesting Project proved to be adequate to data sets of this size and character. However, the project concluded that the Z39.50/OAI Gateway Profile could not be deployed because of limitations in the functionality of typical Z‐servers.

The project concentrated on the technical aspects of building such a service model rather than on the usability of the interface or on questions of interoperability at the metadata level, such as to what extent the vocabularies used by the different metadata communities was compatible.

The project's findings indicate that more labor intensive, or less timely, processes of aggregating records than that envisaged by the Z39.50/OAI approach will continue to be necessary. However, further investigation of hybrid approaches hold promise.

Many thousands of researchers are now using personal bibliographic managers such as Reference Manager, EndNote and ProCite to access bibliographic databases via the Z39.50 protocol. With the EndNote software as an example, this paper demonstrates how researchers are using a standard search interface to access diverse databases and download references into their personal databases. There follows an overview of problems involved in searching the Z39.50 servers of some standard library automation systems (Innovative Interfaces, GEAC, SIRSI, Endeavour) and of two vendors of non‐OPAC databases (Research Libraries Group and SilverPlatter). The paper concludes with some suggestions as to how the library community can contribute to improving the effectiveness of Z39.50 as a research tool.

Aims to focus on research and findings relating to the Z‐server response times and the performance of Z39.50 for parallel searching.

This paper begins by briefly outlining the evolution of Z39.50 and the current trends, including the work of the JISC CC‐interop project. The research crux of the paper focuses on an investigation conducted with respect to testing Z39.50 server (Z‐server) response times in a broadcast (parallel) searching environment. Customised software was configured to broadcast a search to all test Z‐servers once an hour, for 11 weeks. The results were logged for analysis.

Most Z‐servers responded rapidly. “Network congestion” and local online public catalogue usage were not found to influence Z‐server performance significantly. Response time issues encountered by implementers may be the result of non‐response by the Z‐server and how Z‐client software deals with this. The influence of “quick and dirty” Z39.50 implementations is also identified as a potential cause of slow broadcast searching.

The paper indicates various areas for further research, including setting shorter time‐outs and greater end‐user behavioural research to ascertain user requirements in this area. The influence more complex searches, such as Boolean, have on response times and suboptimal Z39.50 implementations are also emphasised for further study.

This paper informs the library and information science (LIS) research community and has practical implications for those establishing Z39.50 based distributed systems, as well as those in the web services community.

The paper challenges popular LIS opinion that Z39.50 is inherently sluggish and thus unsuitable for the demands of the modern user.

Z39.50 is an information retrieval protocol. It has generated much interest but is so far little deployed in UK systems and services. This article gives a functional overview of the protocol itself and the standards background, describes some European initiatives which make use of it, and outlines various issues to do with its future use and acceptance. It is argued that Z39.50 is a crucial building block of future distributed information systems but that it needs to be considered alongside other protocols and services to provide useful applications.

The purpose of this article is to promote the usage of an open‐source gateway product that will enhance the functionality of a Z39.50 server that is maintained by a third‐party vendor.

The required functionality improvements, needed by the LC Z39.50 server (i.e. the problems LC needed to solve) will be listed and described. Possible approaches to solving the problems will be listed. The selected open‐source gateway product and its features will be described. A possible instance of the product's configuration file will be provided and annotated.

It is possible for many third‐party server problems to be corrected or controlled even if the server application is not accessible by vendor APIs. LC was able to do this by installing the YAZ Proxy, a product that is both a Z39.50‐to‐Z39.50 gateway and an SRU‐to‐Z39.50 gateway. The proxy provides a way to filter and sanitize problematic Z39.50 requests, and it also allows the ILS system server to support retrieval of XML records and to support access via an XML‐based search protocol. Dramatic system performance improvements resulted from the installation of this product.

The paper describes an inexpensive way to provide performance improvements to a ILS system Z39.50 server and to provide enhancements that allow XML retrieval of MARC records and the support of an XML‐based search protocol.

The article covers the five‐year history of the implementation of Z39.50‐type products in Russia. All existing projects are mentioned in the order of their development. Since the authors are from RUSLANet, that project is described in greater detail. The architecture of a distributed library system, as well as its basic components, are presented, and the place and role of Z39.50 facilities in Russian libraries are highlighted. The obstacles the Russian library community faces in moving to a networked environment are covered. The need to develop uniquely Russian Z39.50 databases grew from specific document‐ processing features within the libraries. Some prospects for future development and use of Z39.50 environment in Russian libraries are also given.

The British Library is currently progressing several projects involving Z39.50 and SR standards. The Network OPAC trial service is being extended for a further year and the user base broadened. Future applications of Z39.50 currently being investigated include access from Z39.50 clients developed by other suppliers; a ‘virtual’ database to cover all the Library's diverse catalogues; a national distributed bibliographic database.

The paper seeks to provide an overview of the approach taken by the Danish library community towards the automation of ILL and end‐user loan requests.

The physical union catalogue DanBib is explained, along with Bibliotek.dk, which is the end‐user web interface to the public union catalogue. A detailed description is given of the development of an end‐user ILL system.

This facility is currently being tested and implementation is scheduled for the end of 2006.

The paper will be of interest to all librarians who wish to empower end users in searching for and obtaining material in which they are interested.