ERL on campus
| Published date | 01 April 1995 |
| Date | 01 April 1995 |
| Pages | 29-36 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb040585 |
| Author | David J. Price |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
ERL on campus
by David J. Price, Head of Systems
and Deputy Keeper of Scientific
Books,
Bodleian Library, University of
Oxford
The frustrations of attempting to deliver as wide
access as possible to
CD-ROMs,
for
users
of
different
platforms,
led David Price to consider
SilverPlatter's Electronic Reference
Library.
In
this article he outlines some of
the
important
features, describes its implementation at
Oxford, including testing of
a Web
gateway,
and looks forward to future developments.
Background
Systems Librarians are all too familiar with the
expression, 'the Black Art of CD-ROM network-
ing'. Despite the willingness of suppliers to sell
network versions of the products wanted by our
readers, all too few seem able to provide software
to match. To be generous, most offerings can be
described as 'network unfriendly' — not a few
appear to have been designed on the assumption
that it will be the only product to be mounted on
the system. It is astonishing that we continue to
pay for such imperfect goods that, for example,
assume that all users can share the same temporary
swap-file on a file-server, whereas a book with a
reversed page we would return to the supplier post-
haste. In Oxford, since 1992 we have been running
a CD-ROM network based on Novell/OPTI-NET
on which are mounted approximately 40 CD-ROM
products on 100 CD drives. Maintenance of this
system has proved to have high administrative
overheads with respect to installation of recalci-
trant software. Some products demand several
software upgrades each year and so we are faced
with approximately 50 software installations
annually, many requiring great ingenuity and
several hours work before they will run on a
network satisfactorily.
By and large, it would seem that the developers of
CD-ROM search software do not always fully
appreciate the nature of modern, academic, net-
working environments. Speaking in general terms,
with respect to the UK, and probably the US and
Europe too, there is now the expectation that our
information services should reach beyond library
buildings to the users' desktops wherever they are
on campus. We are now in a world of distributed
and open computing. We have moved beyond the
LAN, where the choice and configuration of
workstations can be under the control of the
service providers, to a 'democratic' environment of
mixed networking protocols and heterogeneous
workstation platforms. With respect to the latter it
has often been accepted that in order to support the
majority of departments in a University, informa-
tion providers should cater for the three major
platforms: IBM-type PCs, Macs and UNIX ma-
chines. In reality, PCs vary widely in their
capabilities and might be running different operat-
ing systems ranging through DOS, Windows,
Windows 95, Windows NT, OS/2 and even UNIX.
In the UNIX world, we find that software will
often have to be recompiled if it is to run on the
major varieties of UNIX of which there is a bewil-
dering variety in common use: SunOS, Solaris,
HP,
AIX, LINUX, UNIXWARE, SCO, HP and
Digital, to mention a few. Even in the Mac world,
whose ardent users often stress the ease of install-
ing software, we can find machines ranging from
those with 2-4Mb RAM and the System 6 operat-
ing system to PowerPCs with 16 or more Mb
running System 7 — we must often make a distinc-
tion between a 'Mac' and a 'Big Mac'.
Attractions of ERL
One of our major concerns has been to provide as
wide access as possible to our CD databases. With
our Novell/OPTI-NET system it has been a source
of frustration that we have not been able easily to
provide access to it from workstations other than
PCs.
Even then it has been difficult to support
remote PC users as there are certain configuration
requirements for their workstations*0. Certain
departments and colleges hardly use PCs and are
all UNIX or all Mac; some are still based on
mainframe VMS systems.
We sought a new delivery platform for our
databases based on client/server architecture, in
line with our University's IT strategy. We chose
SilverPlatter's Electronic Reference Library (ERL)
as a system that was both powerful and, in terms
of accessibility, open, and with the flexibility to
integrate it with our other information services. As
far as we are aware, it is still the most advanced
VINE 101 (December 1995)
—29
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