Designing Software for Managing Internet Resource Catalogues: A Case Study with IRCAT-M

Abstract

The Internet is beginning to be seen as a serious, useful source of information, over the past few years. There is significant interest among users to find relevant Internet information, of relevance to their day-to-day tasks. Libraries are finding it necessary to take proactive action in identifying, evaluating and reporting relevant Internet resources to their users. As the number of relevant Internet resources increase, libraries need to develop adequate solutions to manage access to these resources. Libraries have followed different, often ad-hoc, approaches in providing such solutions. We propose a databasedriven, web-based Internet Resource Catalogue Manager as a general-purpose solution, based on international standards. We describe the design factors one has to consider in developing such a system and a prototype package we have developed, called IRCAT-M. It is Web-based system, developed for Windows-based back-end server. It facilitates setting up and managing a database of Internet resources and provides web-based content management, search and browse interface. We discuss the design features in detail, implementation considerations, operational features and further work to be carried out.