Distributed Chinese bibliographic searching

Abstract

Chinese Library (CLiB) was created as pilot project in Singapore to demonstrate distributed multilingual searching of heterogeneous bibliographic library databases. The first phase focused on supporting access to Chinese bibliographic records in primarily English-based computerized library systems. Users accessed CLiB via the Web sending multilingual queries to specified libraries and receiving bibliographic information through any Chinese-enable browser. The CLiB server either distributed the searches using Z39.50 protocol to libraries that supported Chinese or searched a local multilingual bibliographic database. Results were collated, filtered, and sorted for return. Language support issues clearly seen by following a user search from start to end are discussed.