CATS — A MACHINE INDEPENDENT ON‐LINE CATALOGUE SYSTEM
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb040350 |
| Date | 01 February 1986 |
| Pages | 21-25 |
| Published date | 01 February 1986 |
| Author | WDS Motherwell |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
21
CATS - A MACHINE INDEPENDENT ON-LINE CATALOGUE SYSTEM
by
W D S
Motherwell*
Introduction
The CATS on-line catalogue system has been in operation at Cambridge
University Library since 1982, (see report in VINE
47).
This article
reports the current state of the system which has been greatly
enhanced since that time. The system supports the library's on-line
catalogue of books begun in 1978 and also a union list of serials for
Cambridge University. The catalogue records are in UK-MARC format and
are coded according to
AACR2,
with Library of Congress Subject
Headings.
The system provides both an on-line public access catalogue
and a cataloguing service whereby staff can create or amend records
on-line.
The system consists of a suite of programs written entirely in FORTRAN
77 following the ANSI standard. There is no particular dependence on
the computer hardware type and only minor modifications to the source
code are needed to install the system on a different computer.
Catalogue Searching
The search program,
CATS,
provides public access searching of the
catalogue by keywords taken from author, title and subject headings of
the MARC record. Records are found by Boolean intersection of lists
retrieved for each keyword (simplified to only the 'and' operator for
public
use).
Public access is by menu presentation with an option for
more experienced users to switch to a concise command driven mode of
searching.
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
ALL INDEX keyword search
AUTHOR with TITLE
AUTHOR only
TITLE only
SUBJECT only
FORMAT setting
Change search to LIST OF SERIALS
HELP
CONCISE mode of searching
Figure 1. Main menu of search program
* W D S Motherwell is Head of Automation, Cambridge University
Library
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