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BookWhere 2000

Options are selected from tagged dialogue boxes and the host selection screen works like Microsoft Windows ’95 explorer.  One small niggle is that some of the option boxes are too small  particularly the “query tree” display.

Help is standard Windows style but very limited on the evaluation copy probably in order to save on download times.  There is a Web support site.

Searching

You can start a search either by choosing the hosts or creating the search statement.  There is a good set of pre-loaded hosts and databases. A new categorisation feature greatly enhances host organisation.  Each host is categorised under  country/area/library type.  Hosts can be viewed by country alone, by type within country, by country within type or type alone. You can also create groups of frequently used libraries  e.g. all Australian and US government libraries. Selection of a group or hosts is via a Windows explorer style of list  click in the box against a group to select all hosts or expand the group via clicking the “+” sign.

Adding your own hosts is very easy too.  There is a useful “test host” feature to make sure your settings are OK before you start searching. The colour of an Icon against each host shows whether it is “live” or not  this saves time in searches since you can opt not to search against “dead” hosts.

Entering search terms

BookWhere 2000 offers two search levels  simple and “Power”. The simple search allows you to enter terms in up to four fields  Author, title, subject and “Any”  which searches all fields.  You can also enter terms into one further field selectable from the full set of Z39.50 Bib-1 attribute set. The data in the four fields is “ANDed” together and each field may have just one value.  The fields that are presented in simple search may be customised via the parameter settings to suit specific needs.

The Power search option adds the ability to select the Boolean operator (AND, OR, NOT), have multiple search terms from the same field and to add further relation attributes like truncation, position, completeness, to a field.

For example a Power search could be set up to search for: terms and phrases in a complex Boolean statement with certain truncation rules and published between certain dates. This level of power potentially takes BookWhere into the realms of searching commercial information databases all of the Bib-1 attributes are available. It is a pity therefore that the interface for specifying the search statement is both confusing and more seriously, too small to display more than a few elements of a complex statement without using scroll bars. It is fine for most searches for known book titles but serious information retrieval where many terms are combined would be problematical.

Some more help in entering search terms would not go amiss.  There was no guidance on how to enter authors. Experimenting suggested that surname, forename was expected but sometimes the surname on its own was more successful.  The whole question of searching with Z39.50 technology deserves a separate and continuing discussion as clients and servers evolve - see searching with Z39.50.

Retrieving records

Starting the search is easy via the search Icon. Results get posted in the top “Record List” Pane and start appearing as soon as the first host responds. Records are posted initially in order of being received and so are not sorted.  Once all the records have been received, the results are sorted locally in whatever has been set as the default and can be re-sorted in any order - including date of publication - simply by clicking the column headers.  Defaults and new fields for display can be set via Options | Settings.

The bottom half of the Window is divided into two areas  the Full Record and the Record Analysis Panes.  The proportion of the screen devoted to any of these three Panes is controlled by the user and individual Panes can be removed altogether if desired so that you could work with just the Record List at maximum size for example.

As you would expect, the Full Record display Pane gives a display of the full bibliographic record and this is loaded automatically for the current highlighted record in the Record List. You can customise both the full and the brief record by setting the fields to be included or excluded down to the sub-field level. In the Options | Settings, you can select which fields to exclude from the full display and decide the label to sit against each field in the text display. You can also choose to view the indicators or not. You can flip between MARC and labelled display without going into settings.

Not immediately obvious, but of tremendous importance, is the fact that BookWhere downloads the full records from the server not just the Brief records. This means that if you are using a dial-up session, you can bring back records and then sort, filter, browse and export them in MARC format - all off-line. This way of working does not seem to slow the download process probably because all databases are searched in parallel.

The display of records is excellent. In the brief record list, a coloured icon to the left of the items indicates the media type neat and effective as a way to highlight films, music etc. The full display can be toggled between MARC and labelled formats. MARC display has a nice use of colour with sub-field codes in red to set them out from the text.

Once you have a full record displayed, there is a powerful hypertext feature that most OPAC users are now familiar with as “related works” (Dynix) or similar.  Author and subject fields are underlined and in blue  like a Web link.  Clicking on a heading in the record will automatically research the same databases using the heading as a search term.  The original search results are maintained (selectable), a new search session is opened up and presented as the active Window.

The third pane of the results Window is the Record Analysis Pane a really useful filtering tool.  Again you can set which fields are available for filtering in the Options | Settings. The filtering options are presented as a set of check boxes against the chosen fields  the defaults are host (Library) and Subject. Once a set of records is retrieved, perhaps from several libraries, you can easily restrict the list to just one library by checking that name. Or similarly if you have retrieved say 50 works from a title word search for “Stars” and want astrology not the astronomy or movies, then simply clicking the appropriate subject headings in the record analysis Pane will restrict the list appropriately.

If you need to, you can examine a “Log Window” which lists the diagnostics from the server - you can see exactly how the various hosts responded.

Exporting records

Once you have records on your PC they may be exported to a disk file in any one of nine formats including MARC, Procite, Reference Manager, Ibid and plain text. MARC records are in exchange format and so can be used by any MARC loading utility to add onto a library system database for editing. Procite users can take advantage of a fast export feature to load directly into a Procite database.  Note that there is current support only for USMARC.  UNIMARC, UKMARC and MAB are planned for a later release.

Version 3 compliance

BookWhere 2000 claims to have version 3 features but it does not make it clear which these are. A Z-client can be compliant with version 3 yet not have all the features.

Some key version 3 features are: Result set restriction (filtering), scanning (browsing host indexes), sorting and named result sets. BookWhere has some of these or similar features supported at the Z-client end rather than at the Z-server. e.g. sorting and session naming and saving.  It does not have scanning or named result set features.

It gets complicated therefore when trying to sort out what is happening and where. The useful Log facility does return messages from the Z-server if you try to use a feature not supported on every system - like truncation but it is not obvious from the normal session screens why a search has returned zero hits - see searching with Z39.50.

The “Test Host” feature in the host setup function, displays a useful set of Z-server parameters showing which services are supported etc.

Settings

BookWhere Host administration is one of its best features. As well as the categorisation, you have a useful test host facility which brings back a list of supported services. You can also add text descriptions of your own which pop up when you “mouse over” a host a very useful aide memoire for a site’s strengths. Password administration for controlled databases is supported and easy to set up.

Display and sorting rules can set up fields to be shown, sorting orders filter options etc.  These can be defined at the MARC sub-field level and can include the 008 information codes.

Sessions (search statements) can be saved and run when required  saves re-formulation of queries for regularly runs.

Conclusions

A very useful addition to a cataloguer’s toolbox or enquiry desk if you don’t already have a Z-client built into your system. Even if you do have an existing Z39.50 in your OPAC, it is unlikely to have all the flexibility and navigation features of BookWhere. Despite the few niggles, I would certainly recommend the product as long as you are happy with USMARC databases. The search results management  hyper-search, sorting and filtering - are superb.  Host administration and display options have been improved tremendously. 

Download it and try it out.

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