RE: Question for 21 September: How to bridge the gap

[Tom.Hughes, Mass Environmental Library <Thomas.Hughes@state.ma.us>]

Libraries are pretty good at integrating access to the resources they are aware of.  Many online catalogues today are web-based, allowing anyone to create a fairly simple portal that links to the internal resources that are catalogued, and the external internet resources that they are aware of.

As Director of the Massachusetts Environmental Library, I am constantly working to integrate access to all the resources we have access to, regardless of format or location. I have developed a portal (the Massachusetts Environmental Library Internet Interface).  It integrates access to internet and intranet resources on a client side web site.  The interface links to hundreds of sites organized by subject, theme, etc... From time to time, we have distributed the interface, published on floppy disk or CD at conferences.    Because it is client side, it will work for anyone with access to the internet (except for the links that are internal such as our catalog and for password protected sites).  Since we have no federal funding in the library's budget, our resources to do this vary by budget year.    

The problem I find is not how to integrate the access to the written material with the internet resources from my end.  It is finding the internet resources initially that poses the problem.  If EPA were to catalogue all the materials it makes available in print, on the internet, or elsewhere, and make that catalogue available through a Z39.50 (international metadata standard) interface, my library could search our collection and these resources from our catalog software.  If it is a web site, then our catalog is capable of linking out to it.  We could also extract catalog records for any EPA material we own.  In addition, if EPA worked to make sure all it's printed material were available through interlibrary loan, then it would be even better.

The last point I want to make is that even if EPA does the cataloguing, indexing, organization, etc... of it's online material, there is still the need for full text searching of the documents.  If EPA makes it's documents available in a format other than Acrobat on the web that search engines like AltaVista can index, then a skilled researcher can find specific information that isn't possible to capture in cataloguing or development of metadata.