In the 1997, University of Genoa is improving
the following services:
- Services of information retrieval and
experiment with ERL-ALEPH interface.
In 1997 Genoa University, after the trial done
in 1996, implemented the service of access to
some databases for students and researchers by
using the Silver-Platter ERL System.
The databases available are:
Current Contents search complete edition of the
current year (7 sections), weekly up to date;
Medline Advanced current year with monthly
revisions and retrospective since 1966;
Serline including reviews of Medline Advanced;
MathSci of the American Mathematical Society,
since 1980;
SIGLE European database concerning grey
literature, since 1/80 up to 12/1996;
Index to Legal Periodical since 8/1981.
Researchers, staff and students of the University
of Genova, can use the service, after activation
of a specific "user code".
It’s planned to test, on September, the
integration project from SilverPlatter ERL 2.0
and ExLibris ALEPH500. The objective of this
project is to provide a seamless link to the
Web-based ALEPH OPAC when searching using
WebSPIRS dynamic link.
- Rectrospective conversion:
During 1997 the University of Genoa is working on
retrospective conversion of monographs by using
the MICRON Service of OCLC.
Records are in US-MARC format, so they are
downloaded in ALEPH by using UTIL 41. In version
3.2.6 and UTIL 41 works fine, so we didn’t
need to use special software implemented last
year in order to recognize the standard MARC
final caracter
We downloaded about 40.000 records in our ALEPH
database.
- Test of ALEPH 500:
On July 1997 we installed ALEPH 500 for test.
Currently we are testing the OPAC and the
Cataloguing module.
OPAC:
We are testing the GUI and the Web interface. The
Web interface has more feacture than the ALEPH
300 version. For instance, there are some
different kind of full bibliographic formats and
it's possible to send the search results via
e-mail.
We try to use the "front server" that
enables to run more than one www_server, but at
the moment it doesn’t work.
Cataloging:
UNIMARC is our national bibliographic format, so
we want adopt it in ALEPH 500. During July and
August we have prepared, jointly with the Italian
ALEPH distributor - Atlantis s.r.l. - , a
template for monographs and a conversion table
for our ALEPH 300 records to UNIMARC format. We
have downloaded in ALEPH 500 some thousands of
our records converted in a UNIMARC
"preliminary" format with a good
result. We planned to start the cataloguer's
training and to test cataloging in Autumn.