CATRIONA: a distributed, locally-oriented Z39.50 OPAC-based approach to cataloguing the Internet

The aims of CATRIONA were: (1) to investigate the requirements for developing procedures and applications for cataloguing and retrieval of networked resources, and (2) to explore the feasibility of a collaborative project to develop such applications and procedures and integrate them with existing library systems. The project established that a distributed catalogue of networked resources integrated with standard Z39.50 library system OPAC interfaces with information on hard-copy resources is already a practical proposition at a basic level. At least one Z39.50 OPAC client can search remote Z39.50 OPACs, retrieve USMARC records with URLs in 856$u, load a viewer like Netscape, and use it to retrieve and display the remotely held electronic resource on the local workstation. A follow-up project on related issues is being finalized.