In 2001, the Central Office for University Libraries of Padua University (CAB) promoted the development of the Catalogue of e-journals (CaPerE - http://www.cab.unipd.it/capere/). The aim was to develop a common user interface catalogue for e-journals that would: give visibility both to the titles subscribed centrally and by single libraries, promote communication to and from its users; handle malfunctioning; integrate the academic electronic resources (via direct links from databases to the catalogue); perform usage statistics; collect economic and administrative data.
The Working group for the e-journal catalogue was constituted with the purpose of creating a web accessible dynamic database. The choice of the group was towards a product that should prove light, flexible, and strongly user-oriented.
The catalogue is characterized by:
- an administration interface accessible to the authorized librarians through password authentication;
- special features designed for the system administrator;
- a user search interface with cross search options;
- monthly and daily statistics by title and editor usage, number and type of connections.
Technical features
- the catalogue search software has been completely developed from open source tools;
- the database engine is a MySQL server;
- the search interface, the display of the results, the administration of input and editing of data have been developed with a zope server application server;
- usage statistics are generated by webalizer;
- the server is powered by linux operating system, the application has been developed on free softwares (MySQL and Zope);
- the server is centrally located at CAB;
- the data entry is fed both by the single library using a web browser and by importing data from xls/csv files using perl scripts.
At present the catalogue consists of 5500 e-journal titles grouped into subject areas. Unique titles from different sources are merged, while the relevant information leading to the sources are displayed separately. This functionality is proving to be useful as other Universities (Venice and Ancona) have joined CaPerE. All the Universities share the same database and contribute to the catalogue while accessing a customisable interface.
Future plans are of introducing an English version of the interface, the FAQ, a form for DDS, and developing the part concerning the management of administrative data (now limited to print journal).
We reckon that CaPerE could be of some interest for biomedical Libraries since, by setting the subject areas according to their specific classification system, it would become an effective tool for the rapid creation of an e-journal catalogue involving limited budget resources.
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