[241] in Information Retrieval
mosaic catalog
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (John Saylor)
Fri Jul 15 17:44:54 1994
To: elibdev@MIT.EDU
Date: Fri, 15 Jul 94 17:43:49 EDT
From: John Saylor <jsaylor@MIT.EDU>
I don't know if you have seen this or something like it [or if it has
any applicability to the MIT situaltion] but I thought I would throw
it up and see who salutes.
jsaylor
------- Forwarded Message
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 1994 11:16:38 -0500 (CDT)
From:JAHOFFMANN@tiny.computing.csbsju.edu
To: web4lib@library.Berkeley.EDU
Cc: JAHOFFMANN@tiny.computing.csbsju.edu
Subject: ANNOUNCE: HyperPals, WWW interface to PALS
I'd like to announce the creation of HyperPals, a WWW interface to
Pals. Pals is the Online Public Access Catalog for most of Minnesota's
university, college, and state libraries. HyperPals uses a forms
interface in addition to regular hypertext links to guide the user
through the more common search strategies in a much prettier,
more user-friendly environment than other OPAC's I've seen, at least.
Work on HyperPals is being supported by the libraries at the College
of St. Benedict and St. John's University. Currently we are planning
on having HyperPals available to library patrons this fall, which means
I'd like to see people using it to get some feedback (and those inevitable
bug reports). I'm still adding features, so those familiar with Pals will
find it very limited for the time being. If you are familiar with the
Pals gateway at St. Olaf, HyperPals will currently provide a similar amount
of features, but also supports search histories and will include in the next
couple of days support for boolean searches and logging search results. This
isn't an official announcement, I'm only doing so because i've come to a
point were I'd like to start hearing more widespread comments, suggestions,
and bug reports.
If you are interested in seeing HyperPals, the URL is:
http://bingen.cs.csbsju.edu/pals/hyperpals.html
As I stated previously, this does require a WWW browser that supports
forms. I would highly recommend using a graphical browser such as
Mosaic. Filling out the search form using Lynx can be kind of annoying,
but it will work. If your institution uses Minnesota's Pals catalog
you will be able to add your library to HyperPals and search your own
library in addition to or instead of the default area libraries. Even
if you're not affiliated with Pals in any way, feel free to take a look
at it. If you have questions or comments about HyperPals, send mail to:
pals@bingen.cs.csbsju.edu or
jahoffma@bingen.cs.csbsju.edu
------- End of Forwarded Message
