MLA News Selected Articles

August 2000

Prospero: Delivering Ariel Documents to the Desktop

Edited by Emily Hull

Submitted by Eric Schnell, John A. Prior Health Sciences Library, Ohio State University–Columbus

Editor's Note: The Prospero Electronic Delivery Project was this year's winner of the ISI/Frank Bradway Rogers Information Advancement Award.

The Ariel document delivery system has been successful in reducing transmission time and costs for libraries by allowing them to send documents in electronic format through the Internet. However, Ariel documents are usually printed out by the receiving library for the requestor and delivered using traditional methods. Converting Ariel documents back into paper format negates some of the gains in delivery time. Prospero, a software program that preserves Ariel documents in electronic format, distributes them directly to library patron desktops using the Web.

Like Ariel, Prospero is named for a character in Shakespeare's play, The Tempest. In the play, Prospero and his daughter are set adrift at sea. They land on an island where Prospero learns magic. Prospero is the only character who can see Ariel. Before leaving the island, Prospero sets Ariel free from his imprisonment in a tree. In a similar vein, the program Prospero uses a bit of programming "magic" to set Ariel documents free—from paper (wood pulp). Patrons can then decide either to keep the documents electronically "free" or imprison them back to paper. The Ariel system, hidden from library patrons, is seen only by Prospero.

The Prospero staff module captures and converts native Ariel documents from tagged image file format (TIFF) into portable document format (PDF) files that can be viewed using the free Adobe Acrobat Reader. Additionally, TIFF files can be imported or scanned directly into Prospero without having been sent or received by Ariel. Ariel software is not required to use most of Prospero's scanning and importing features. When Prospero processes a document, it places the converted file in a directory on a local Web server and sends an email alert to the patron. A patron database maintains authentication data consisting of a patron's email address and a randomly assigned personal identification number (PIN). This authentication system restricts access to a document to the requestor. Any current Web browser can be used to access the server. After authentication, a Web page containing a list of a patron's documents is dynamically generated. The patron initiates the download by selecting the desired document. Patrons can also delete their documents directly from the Web interface.

The Prospero Web server/patron interface module can run on any Windows, UNIX, or Linux Web server software and hardware. Individual libraries can customize many features of the system. For example, Prospero can be configured to remove a document automatically from the system after a specific number of viewings or after a certain number of days. Each library can customize these parameters to comply with local copyright interpretations. All configuration files can be modified using a simple text editor. The patron interface Web page is a simple hypertext markup language (HTML) file that can be modified to fit into any local Web page standards.

Prospero, developed at the John A. Prior Health Sciences Library, Ohio State University, is an open source product distributed under GNU public license. Libraries can download and use the Prospero system free of charge by connecting to bones.med.ohio-state.edu/prospero/. Feedback and suggestions to Eric Schnell are strongly encouraged.

Research Spotlight

Submitted by Kristin Stoklosa, National Institutes of Health Library, Bethesda, MD

This series features MLA members' research projects published outside the library literature in scientific and biomedical publications. The Research Resources Committee of the MLA Research Section shares this series to promote awareness of information research, encourage research in library practice, stimulate interest in a variety of publications, and inspire further MLA research.

"Surname Plus Recallable Title Word Searches for Known Items by Scholars"

MLA Member and Project Leader
Frederick G. Kilgour, AHIP, School of Information and Library Science, University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill

Source
Kilgour FG, Moran BB. Surname plus recallable title word searches for known items by scholars. J Am Soc Inf Sci 2000 Jan;51(1):83–9.

Project Description
This article describes an experiment that is useful for designing systems in which a user can retrieve a known item from an online public access catalog (OPAC) by searching with two or three terms and generating a single-screen results set. Anticipating derivation of future OPACs from digital title pages, the premise of the research is that very efficient searches would consist of two or three words and would produce a hits list where the relevant item appeared on the first results screen. The study used catalog records of eight monographs for which the researchers searched the University of Michigan's OPAC, a NOTIS system, using author surnames and major title words as search terms. For each monograph, the researchers conducted successive searches until they generated a set of results fitting on a single screen of twenty lines. If the first search for the author surname plus first significant title word yielded more than one screen, a second search was conducted adding the next title word. If this search still yielded more than one screen, a NOTIS "limiting field" search of the author to the MARC 100 field and the title to the 245 field was conducted. With a per screen limit of twenty lines, searches comprising surname together with two significant title words, or one if only one was available, yielded a single-screen results set 99% of the time.

Related Articles by this Author
The long-range goal of these studies is to improve access by users to information retrieval from library book collections.

• Kilgour FG, Moran BB, Barden JR. Retrieval effectiveness of surname-title-word searches for known items by academic library users. J Am Soc Inf Sci 1999 Mar;50(3):265–70.
• Kilgour FG. Cataloging for a specific miniature catalog. J Am Soc Inf Sci 1995 Oct;46(9):704–6.
• Kilgour FG. Effectiveness of surname-title-word searches by scholars. J Am Soc Inf Sci 1995 Mar;46(2):146–51.
• Kilgour FG, Feder NL. Quotations referenced in scholarly monographs. J Am Soc Inf Sci 1992 Apr;43(1):268–70.

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Rural Health

Edited by Emily Hull

Submitted by Everly Brown, AHIP, Charles M. Baugh Biomedical Library, University of South Alabama–Mobile

 

Name	URL and Description
Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (ORHP)	www.nal.usda.gov/orhp/ This site details the grant programs offered by the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy (ORHP) to rural health care providers and state offices of rural health. It also provides links to publications such as Rural Health News, a full-text newsletter; the Outreach Sourcebook, a book with descriptions of rural health outreach projects; and Definitions of Rural, a useful handbook.
National Agricultural Safety Database (NASD)	www.cdc.gov/niosh/nasd/nasdhome.html A useful site for materials regarding safety, health, and injury prevention in agriculture, including OSHA and EPA standards, extension publications, abstracts and ordering information for agricultural safety–related videos, a directory of people and organizations involved in agricultural safety and health, slide presentations, posters, sample news releases, and public service announcement scripts.
National Children's Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety	research.marshfieldclinic.org/children/ Based at the Marshfield Clinic in Marshfield, WI, the National Children's Center for Rural and Agricultural Health and Safety 's Website is a good resource for materials relating to the health and safety of rural youth. The center provides a variety of online materials, including a full-text quarterly newsletter, fact sheets, and professional resource packets for accident prevention. A media page publishes press releases, alerts, and sample public service announcements.
National Rural Health Association (NRHA)	www.nrharural.org This nonprofit organization's Website offers links to abstracts from the Journal of Rural Health, full text of issue papers adopted by the association, and a variety of other publications available for purchase that focus on topics of interest in the area. Lists of rural health events and National Rural Health Association (NRHA) conferences are available, as well as information on the Migrant Health Care Fellowship program sponsored by the organization.
National Rural Health Services Research Database	www.rural-health.org/database.htm Supported by the federal Office of Rural Health Policy, this is a unique database of funded rural health services research projects underway in the United States. Projects remain in the database up to one year after completion and may be searched by project funder, research institution, principal investigator, project title, and keyword. New projects can be submitted voluntarily via an online form.
National Rural Recruitment and Retention Network (3R Net)	www.3rnet.org Composed of members in forty-five states, this nonprofit organization assists health professionals in finding practice opportunities in rural areas throughout the country, through its searchable database of rural health care positions.
Rural Family Medicine	www.ruralfamilymedicine.org Created by the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine Rural Interest Group, this Website provides an extensive list of links to rural health topics under its Rural Practitioners section, as well as bibliographies of suggested readings. The Rural Educators section provides a compilation of teaching strategies on rural health topics, as well as links to issues in rural medical education.
Rural Information Center Health Service (RICHS)	www.nal.usda.gov/ric/richs/ Operating as part of the National Agriculture Library's Rural Information Center, the Rural Information Center Health Service (RICHS) disseminates information about rural health issues through publications (some full text), funding information, conference announcements, and an extensive list of Internet resources. Brief complimentary database searches are available on rural health topics.
RuralPSYCH	www.apa.org/rural/ Developed by the American Psychological Association (APA), this site provides a list of APA-accredited psychology internships and graduate programs in the United States and Canada that deal with rural issues. The latest available report is from 1997.