INFOMINE

A Virtual Library for Today and Tomorrow

David Rios

• Volunteer Indexers
• Limited Budget
• Actions of few benefit larger community
• Shared resource avoids duplication
• Both are available via the web
• Always more to do

• What is INFOMINE?
• Searching INFOMINE
• INFOMINE’s National NetGain Program
• Adding Records into INFOMINE
• New Features and Future Enhancements
• INFOMINE’s Customized Views
• NetGain – Join Us!

[image missing]

• User centered and librarian built
• Currently a database centered virtual library
• Future development: a hybrid virtual library plus “smart” search engine featuring machine assisted collecting, indexing, and content maintenance

• Eliminates HTML work for content builders
• Dynamically generates HTML pages
• Provides in-depth subject indexing/multiple access points without redundant keying
• Eases maintenance/updating tasks
• Facilitates multi-campus/multi-library collaborative efforts in content building

Searching INFOMINE

INFOMINE’s National NetGain Program

• FIPSE Grant –$298,999 (1998) Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education U.S. Department of Education
• National Leadership Grant–$498,000 (1999) Institute of Museum and Library Services

• INFOMINE is responding to a definite need. Thousands of libraries are in fact creating similar extensive Internet resource collections.
  • “Millions of Internet resources are out there and of worth to our patrons and colleagues. Internet growth remains rapid. Our site and our people used to be able to keep up… a couple of years ago.”
  • “My access to systems help is very limited.”
  • “While there is room for many good library-based Internet finding tools, perhaps not every library system can afford to do this work well by itself or needs to duplicate, from scratch, such a service?”

• If we worked together, we could eliminate these problems.
• INFOMINE is the foundation for a cooperative tool that emphasizes working together and pooling resources.

• A proven tool with a successful track record
• Considerable content — over 20,000 records
• Expert content builders
• Expert system designers. Librarians and CS Professors

• Extend bibliographer/selector expertise to the Internet
• Apply existing selection/evaluation criteria to resource selection
• Provide in-depth subject indexing (LCSH, keyword, etc.) to maximize access to resource content
• Use Dublin Core standard descriptive framework
• Provide easy-to-use adder.editor functions, allowing librarians to participate without extensive training.

• Full-text searching of INFOMINE crawled
  records
• Keyword Parser
• A hybrid virtual library plus a “smart” search engine featuring machine assisted collecting, indexing, and content maintenance (Limited Area Search Engine – LASE)