The 7th Dublin Core Metadata Workshop

October 25-27, 1999
Die Deutsche Bibliothek Frankfurt am Main, Germany

A project for an on-line catalogue of electronic resources: Easycat.ER
Gianfranco Crupi, Donatella Parlanti, Carla Simone
Biblioteca "Angelo Monteverdi" Centro interdipartimentale di servizi per gli studi filologici, linguistici e letterari Università di Roma "La Sapienza"

The Biblioteca "Angelo Monteverdi" serves three Departments at Rome University "La Sapienza" (Italianistica e Spettacolo; Studi linguistici e letterari; Studi romanzi) which employ over 130 Lecturers and Professors and covers the teaching and research requirements of a vast scientific field.
Our Library has just completed a project for a catalogue of electronic resources, both remote and local, which entails the integration of its OPAC with other bibliographical information available on-line.

Our project would offer a further catalogation of on-line resources specifically relating to the subject areas required by our users. We deemed it as necessary to enable our users direct access to as wide a set of documents as possible, both relating to our holdings (books, periodicals, abstracts and suchlike, or CD-ROMs) and other documents available both locally or on-line.
Our project is based on the software Easyweb and Easycat (implemented by the company Nexus from Florence, and the Sistema Bibliotecario di Ateneo of the Istituto Universitario di Architettura at Venezia and the Università degli Studi, Pavia) and is currently available as a demo.

It is articulated in two parts: software for catalogation and search on the www:
  • Catalogue
    EasyCatElectronicResource (ECER)
    1. Open from any browser (Netscape if avaiable) the address:
      http://www.easyweb.firenze.it/cgi-bin/easycat/ecget?DB=ECER&TP=IU&
    2. Clic on the arrow appearing on the right hand-side of the line: EC database bibliografico standard;
    3. Select ECER risorse elettroniche;
    4. Type "rifr" as your Username and "rifr3" as password (the username has two different functions: rifr does not allow to delete or modify catalogue records created under other usernames)
    5. To create a new record clic on "immissione"
  • Search the Catalogue
    EasyWebElectronicResource (EWER)
    1. Open from any browser (Netscape if avaiable) the address:
      http://www.easyweb.firenze.it/new/ricerche.html
    2. e.g. if you want to search PROVERBI, type the word under CAMPI, in the line marked TUTTI I CAMPI.

The debate on new tecniques of catalogation, which take account of the ever growing amount of resources available on the net, is well accounted for in specialist literature. As a consequence, we wanted to meet the requirements of our users whilist remaining as much in line as possible with international standards and international projects, already operative, as the Dublin Core.
Our basis for this new project has been the IFLA publication on electronic resources (ISBD.ER: International Standard Bibliographic Description for Electronic Resources. München : Saur, 1997). It consists of 8 different areas for the bibliographical description; only some of them are compulsory, and it is necessary to keep their order in the bibliographical record. Their standard derives from a model built essentially for books, they had therefore to leave in notes some information relating specifically to electronic resources (system requirements, access, updating).
Dublin Core is based on a core of 15 elements and is characterised by its flexibility and userfriendliness. Each element is optional and can be repeated and the sequence of elements is not fixed. We have therefore aimed at combining ISBD with the flexibility Dublin Core. In fact, our model for bibliographical records keeps the ISBD standard model with its compulsory areas, but adds a variety of other areas (some specific to electronic resources) aimed at reducing the amount of information which in ISBD can be confined to notes.

We have elaborated two types of bibliographical records for remote and local resources:
  • Remote resources:
    title and statement of responsibility area, type of resource, publication, date, language, note, format, access, links, rights, e-mail, last update, source, description, subject, coverage, relation;
  • Local resources:
    title and statement of responsibility area, type of resource, publication, date, physical description, language, note, format, system requirements, last update, description, subject, coverage.

All areas which are compulsory in ISBD.ER are to be filled and can be exported in UNIMARC format. Both the local and the remote databases are integrated in the Library’s OPAC but can also be made available as independent catalogues.

We are aware of the fact that the catalogue would be aimed at a highly specialized public, but this is in line with the field covered by our holdings.

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© Die Deutsche Bibliothek
Hannelore Effelsberg / 16.10.1999