Hermes, the Information Messenger. Integrating Information Services and Delivering Them to the End User

Abstract

The boom of the internet during the last 10 years has produced an accelerated and slightly chaotic growth in information services. User frustration with multiple databases, confusing interfaces, bewildering query languages, search protocols, and differing results formats has also increased. These services need to be both integrated and homogenized. Hermes is a research tool that uses specially designed acquisition, parsing and presentation methods to integrate information resources, from searching in disparate bibliographic databases, to accessing the full text articles online, and developing a web of information associated with each reference, via one seamless common interface. The system has been developed with Open Source software and has a Web interface. At present it searches 17 bibliographic databases on several different platforms, and delivers results from more than 7,000 full text electronic journals. We also discuss the obstacles that exist for the development of this kind of tool, due to the lack of acceptance and implementation of standards, and compare Hermes with other similar projects.