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Hello, ARLIS-L.

I'm cross-posting to VRA-L too; so hope you'll forgive if you've seen this
message.

If you have or know about slide library catalogs, we need your help.

We in RIT's Wallace Library (http://wally.rit.edu/) have about 60,000
primarily art slides we want to catalog, digitally scan, and make available
over the Internet to our users (within appropriate copyright restrictions,
of course).

We currently have multimedia items like videocassettes cataloged in our
general Innovative Interfaces Public Access Catalog including our WebPAC
(http://albert.rit.edu/).  Our Innovative WebPAC also has the ability to
display images, one-at-a-time, by clicking on the url listed in a MARC 856
tag (for example
http://albert.rit.edu/search/d+posters+polish/1,4,10/item&d+posters+polish&2
,,3 or do a subject search on "Posters Polish" and select the 1st entry).

We'd like to learn from you what online catalog system, available over the
Internet, we should use for our slide collection by asking a few questions.
 The first question is the most important one since we trying to decide
whether to integrate our slide records in our traditional library catalog
or whether to create a separate slide/image catalog; so if that's all you
have time to answer, we'd appreciate it.

1)  Are you cataloging/integrating your slide library into your general
library book catalog, or are you keeping a separate online catalog of your
slide library that is not integrated with your general library catalog?

2)  If you do keep a separate online slide catalog, what database system
are you using?  EmbARK, Informix Illustra, Oracle MediaServer, Microsoft
Access, FileMaker Pro, OCLC SiteSearch/WebZ or another Z39.50 database
server, a locally-created system?

3)  If you've integrated it into your library's online catalog and/or
WebPAC, who is your vendor and are your users happy with the integration of
slides with traditional book material?

4)  Do you have a digitized image linked to each slide catalog record?

5)  Have you looked at using or are you using a Z39.50 compliant server for
your slide catalog?
    If yes, which one?

6)  What catalog (or metadata) fields have you used for your slide catalog
record?  In other words, are you using:
 a) the VRA core categories draft, http://www.oberlin.edu/~art/vra/core.html?
 b) the CNI/OCLC Workshop on Metadata for Networked Images fields based on
the Dublin Core (http://www.oclc.org:5046/conferences/imagemeta/index.html)?
 c) the MESL Data Dictionary v.1.0, 2d draft
(http://www.gii.getty.edu/mesl/about/docs/datadict.html)?
 d)  fields defined locally by you?
 e)  fields mapped to the MARC record you adapted locally for slides?


7)  May we look at your site on the Internet?

Any and all responses to the above questions and other comments beyond
these are very much appreciated!

I'll be glad to collate the results and post them to the list if anyone's
interested.

Thank you,
Michael Robertson,
Wallace Library, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York, USA
http://www.rit.edu/~marwml