The emergence of high-speed telecommunications networks as a basic
feature of the scholarly workplace is driving the demand for electronic
document delivery. Three distinct categories of electronic
publishing/republishing are necessary to support access demands in this
emerging environment:
1.) Conversion of paper or microfilm archives to electronic format
2.) Conversion of electronic files to formats tailored to
electronic retrieval and display
3.) Primary electronic publishing (materials for which the
electronic version is the primary format)
OCLC has experimental or product development activities in each of these
areas. Among the challenges that lie ahead is the integration of these
three types of information stores in coherent distributed systems.
The CORE (Chemistry Online Retrieval Experiment) Project is a model for
the conversion of large text and graphics collections for which
electronic typesetting files are available (category 2). The American
Chemical Society has made available computer typography files dating from
1980 for its twenty journals. This collection of some 250 journal-years
is being converted to an electronic format that will be accessible
through several end-user applications.
The use of Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) offers the means
to capture the structural richness of the original articles in a way that
will support a variety of retrieval, navigation, and display options
necessary to navigate effectively in very large text databases.
An SGML document consists of text that is marked up with descriptive tags
that specify the function of a given element within the document. As a
formal language construct, an SGML document can be parsed against a
document-type definition (DTD) that unambiguously defines what elements
are allowed and where in the document they can (or must) occur. This
formalized map of article structure allows the user interface design to
be uncoupled from the underlying database system, an important step
toward interoperability. Demonstration of this separability is a part of
the CORE project, wherein user interface designs born of very different
philosophies will access the same database.
NOTES:
(6) The CORE project is a collaboration among Cornell University's
Mann Library, Bell Communications Research (Bellcore), the American
Chemical Society (ACS), the Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), and
OCLC.