Timing is Everything: Full Text Journals at OCLC

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Timing is EverythingFull Text Journals at OCLC
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OCLC

• Service
• Cataloging
• Inter-Library Loan
• Reference
• Size
• 1,000 Journals in Progress
• 25,000 Libraries
• 250,000,000 Records in FirstSearch

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Full Text Beginnings

• Information Display
• Saw Trend of Metadata to Full Text
• Metafont TeX

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Early Problems

• Fonts
• Speed
• Communications
• Printing
• Display

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Projects

• Graph-Text
• ACS Journals
• CD ROM
• Hercules Graphics IBM 286 PCs
• Kirk-Othmer
• Chemical Encyclopedia
• BRS to SGML
• Wyse 700 Display

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Progression

• Delivery
• 9600 Baud Offline
• CDROM Online
• Network Online
• Web Browsers

• Format
• SGML/TeX
• HTML
• PDF
• Image

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Electronic Journals Online

• Guidon Client
• SGML/TeX/DVI
• Dozens of Journals
• Too Expensive

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Electronic Collections Online

• 700 Journals Online
• Loading 50 Journals/month
• Minimal Processing by OCLC
• PDF
• Metadata
• Closer to the FirstSearch Database Model

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Lessons Learned

• CD ROM is not the same as telecom
• Math, Tables Layout are 90 of the effort
• Production just as expensive as we thought
• SGML helps, but not much for production
• Hard to beat TeX
• Never completely got away from fonts

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Lessons Learned (continued)

• Publishers werent ready when EJO started
• Even harder to push users
• Each publisher is expensive, esp. with SGML

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Lessons Learned (continued)

• Proprietary Clients are wrong
• Its the data that matters
• Image works fine for this
• Printing is critical
• End Users less worried about format than
  publishers

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Problems

• Old
• Communications
• Printing
• Computing
• Client
• Fonts?
• Timing?

• New
• Pricing
• Licensing
• Archiving
• Integration
• Digital
• Physical
• Standards