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Integral Concepts was initially formed by a group of librarians and IT people in order to create
and market applications specifically geared towards library Technical Services. The main focus so far has been the development of a complete Windows- based cataloguing workstation called MARCwriter. This arose from
a certain frustration at the lack of an existing application that would meet the needs of the cataloguing department of a large academic library.
The goal was a stand-alone application using:
- Z39.50 protocol to search for and download bibliographic records in MARC format;
- an editor to manipulate them (edit, verify headings, check for errors) and/or to create original bibliographic and authority records;
- a built-in FTP client to send finished records to a local system.
The design envisages complete compatibility with any MARC-based catalogue, but with far more flexibility and productivity than the cataloguing
modules of certain online bibliographic utilities, or of various Integrated Local Systems.
ZSearcher is the "search" module of the cataloguing client - MARCwriter. ZSearcher has been released first as a separate program because
was seen to be useful to librarians who would not be interested in the complete cataloguing workstation, but who would want to use a Z39.50 client for doing database searches. And also some cataloguers might be
perfectly happy with the cataloguing unit of their local system, and so would prefer to use ZSearcher on its own to find and put records (via FTP) to their local system for editing.
The full version of ZSearcher can be downloaded from the website. Review www.integralconcepts.com |
