July 2002
Changes to Home Page, more document links added and now BOPAC2
links direct to full list of targets.
Apologies for earlier breaks of service when BOPAC was moved to a differnt server, same URLS should work
July 2001
Targets revised. Link to new BOSS project added.
17 Nov 2000
BOPAC restarted, apologies for the break in service following
an air conditioning failure.
Nov 2000
Documents relating to authority control added
to web site
Dec 20th 1999
Library of Congress changed to new Z39.50 server.
National Library of Canada added.
Oct 15th 1999
Following email update sent out to various contacts.
email us if you wanted to be added to the list.
BOPAC * The usual disclaimer This is a another brief newsletter to various people that weve been in touch with on topics related to the BOPAC Project to keep you informed about progress with BOPAC. So apologies if you've already been told some of this news, heard it elsewhere, lost interest, etc... On the other hand please pass it on to anyone else you think might be interested. * Servers As more UK libraries offer Z39.50 access we are adding them whenever we have the information. We now have 25 UK academic libraries available and a couple of other targets under test. Suggestions always welcome. Our 'home' system Bradford has just changed and we havent got a working link to that re-established yet. * Changes to the BOPAC System * ------------------------------- We are making a number of changes to the Java applet which displays the search results. These include: - Select by subject option, in addition to the previous options you can now select groups of records by subject. *** We would be particularly interested in feedback on this** We have made the alterations but please be aware this is still work in progress. - Showing actual title as well as uniform title in first screen. We hope this makes the display more informative, for example when a work and its translations have been clustered together. - Full record display now includes ISSN and URLs from MARC 856 (not active links yet). - The size of the applet and button layout have been changed slightly (most users shouldnt notice much difference but the system now looks more uniform across a range of browsers/platforms). *CCQ The article on BOPAC mentioned in the previous newsletter is due to appear in issue 28(2) *Ariadne An article 'Practical Clumping' based on our experiences with BOPAC appears in Ariadne, 20, June 1999, ISSN 1361-3200, http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue20/bopac/ *Guidelines for OPAC Displays http://www.ifla.org/ifla/VII/s13/guide/opac.htm This was mentioned in our last newsletter and a copy of Fred Ayres' response can now be found off the BOPAC Home page at http://www.comp.brad.ac.uk/research/database/bopac2.html Mick Ridley 15/10/99
July 2nd 1999
New version of Java applet installed (details to follow), with resized
applet and some changes and additions to available servers.
June 4th 1999
New servers added
April 1999
Melvyl 10 year database removed from list of servers
since it is no longer supported.
Feb 11th 1999
Following email update sent out to various contacts.
email us if you wanted to be added to the list.
BOPAC * The usual disclaimer This is a another brief newsletter to various people that weve been in touch with on topics related to the BOPAC Project to keep you informed about progress with BOPAC. So apologies if you've already been told some of this news, heard it elsewhere, lost interest, etc... On the other hand please pass it on to anyone else you think might be interested. * New Servers Added We have added quite a number of new Z39.50 servers to those available on BOPAC. Notably we have branched out from just having library catalogues and now offer Medline as well as two databases from the Cairns project. Most of the new servers are UK ones. Some of these come from the listing at UKOLN http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/dlis/zdir/ and others from personal contacts. Weve added the servers for two of the UK's JISC funded clumps projects, Riding and Cairns. These are added into our full set and also available with their own entry points below http://www.bopac2.comp.brad.ac.uk/~bopac2/htdocs/evaluate.shtml We are in the process of checking and testing the searches supported by the various servers so let us know of any problems or inconsistancies. Two of the Cairns servers, BUBL and CATRIONA, are not well served by the current system we admit since they are databases of internet resources and the record display doesnt include URLs at present. The full records can be seen by using F2 for the MARC display however. *Netscape Some versions of Netscape seem to have problems with our Java applet. Version 4.07 on some Unix platforms can have problems loading large retrievals, this seems to have gone with 4.5 on Unix but that version may have font problems in some cases. *CCQ An article on BOPAC is due to appear in Cataloging & Classification Quarterly early this year. *Guidelines for OPAC Displays http://www.ifla.org/ifla/VII/s13/guide/opac.htm Some of you may have already seen the above IFLA report, currently open for review. We will be testing BOPAC on some of the examples in the paper. *Future Full record display - add URL and make linkable and printable Mick Ridley 05/02/99
Jan 1999
Added various new servers mainly Cairns clump
December 3rd 1998
Added new Riding clump target selection point and updated general entry info.
November 9th 1998
Updated list of targets installed, includes new UK targets from
UKOLN list.
July 1998
Numerous breaks in service due to software and hardware changes
and electrical work in University.
June 16th 1998
Default title search changed to "Title contains" since this
seems to give a more similar response from various servers.
"Title equals" was interpreted differently.
April 28th 1998
Access to Medline added and changes made to full record display
(for better display of Medline records).
April 8th 1998
Following email message sent out to various people we
had been in touch with
BOPAC
This is a another brief newsletter to various people to keep you
informed about progress with BOPAC. So apologies if you've already
been told some of this news, heard it elsewhere, lost interest, etc...
On the other hand please pass it on to anyone else you think might be
interested.
* BOPAC2
Our BLRIC funding has now come to an end and an account of this work
is now available (see below), we hope to publish a number of articles
in due course on this work. Following the end of the user evaluation
part of the project we have made a few small changes to the system and
are doing some maintenance work.
* BOPAC2 Report
The Project report
The Bradford OPAC 2 (BOPAC2)
Managing and Displaying Retrievals from a Distributed Search in Z39.50
British Library Research and Innovation Report 103
is now available, there is a online version at
http://www.bopac2.comp.brad.ac.uk/~bopac2/report/
or as a link from the project home page
http://www.comp.brad.ac.uk/research/database/bopac2.html
* The Future
The system will remain available in its present form and we hope to do
some small amounts of work on it. We are always interested in adding
Z39.50 servers to those available, so please let us know of any that
you think we should add. We are also looking into sources of funding to
continue the work on BOPAC, various possible directions came up in the
course of the project and there are a number of things, some small some
large, that we would like to pursue.
Mick Ridley 08/04/97
April 3rd 1998
Project Report put online
March 1998
Various changes to the "look" of the Europagate derived part of the system.
March 6th 1998
User Counter reset and modified questionnaire installed.
February 5th 1998
Break in service for system reboot.
January 31st 1998
Official end of project funding.
January 7th 1998
Break in service due to electrical testing.
December 17th 1997
Link to BOPAC added to NISS Library OPACs in HE listing.
December 11th 1997
Small change to questionnaire to fix problem caused
by very long answer to any one question.
November 24th 1997
Note of public availablity of BOPAC sent to autocat mailing list.
November 21st 1997
Text of message emailed to evaluators and other contacts.
BOPAC2 This is a brief newsletter to various people to keep you informed about progress with BOPAC2. So apologies if you've already been told some of this news, heard it elsewhere, lost interest, etc... *Project Extension With many thanks to British Library Research and Innovation Centre we have a project extension which will allow us to do more evaluation. The project will now run till the end of Jan 98, although we hope to continue the work in some form after that time. A number of the items below follow on from this project extension. * BOPAC goes Public To get more user feedback for the evaluation we are now making BOPAC2 more publicly available. The URLs are still the same http://www.bopac2.comp.brad.ac.uk/~bopac2/htdocs/evaluate.shtml for the system itself and http://www.comp.brad.ac.uk/research/database/bopac2.html for the project home page which now contains a link to the system (so this is probably the best URL to tell people and please do). We are also announcing the system on a number of email lists and news groups. Allied to this the servers available have been revised. We would still like comments on the ones available and any other suggestions. Thanks to the server providers for their cooperation. To make the evaluation meaningful, the system will be stable and not change (apart from any necessary bug fixes) till Xmas. Suggestions for change are still most welcome and we hope may be implemented in the future. * Localized versions Again linked to getting evaluation feedback we also now have two localized versions of BOPAC set up for Leeds and Bradford University Libraries. These have Leeds and Bradford University and BLDSC and LoC as servers, with the local library set on by default. These are available as links from each Library's Web pages. We also have a special PC set up in Bradford University Library with Netscape set to point at BOPAC2, with some display material and printed questionnaires as part of our end user survey. This is partly to provide a Java enabled browser, to overcome the problem of Windows 3.1 systems. Thanks to both libraries for their help. * Online Questionnaire We now have an online questionnaire, please fill in the Web form and click the button to send it off to us. Mick Ridley