Objective
Serial handling and information about the location of serial titles is central to many library services. Project CASA will address both the needs of professional users, such as bibliographic agencies, libraries and journal publishers, to check, verify or revise bibliographic records of serials at the national and international ISSN level; and of end-users searching for serials titles and their locations.
The project aims to create a serials authority list based on the ISSN system, allowing users to search distributed catalogues of national serials holdings and to locate serials, while offering national union catalogues and SSN agencies the possibility of exchanging and revising bibliographic serials data in cooperation with the ISSN international centre.
The value-added service of CASA should allow the user to find additional information about publishers, document delivery services and article citations and abstracts from multiple locations.
Technical approach
CASA aims to use client-server architecture and explores possible uses of WWW technology to locate serial services via ISSN. Based on comprehensive surveys of readily available software and commonly accepted standards, it will develop a common user interface for searching the distributed serials catalogues, taking into account in particular Z39.50 for retrieval and existing software development tools such as Java, JDBC, XML, Dublin Core.
Key issues
The project will address the following key issues:
the facility for national agencies and libraries to enter, verify and amend serials data according to standardised protocols and software at national level and with the ISSN central register;
the ability to search via a common user interface distributed union catalogues of serials;
the creation of a Serial Services Directory for value-added, related information.
Impact, users and expected results
The project will encourage and facilitate collaboration at a European level of national SSN centres, and should offer significant improvement of access to and quality of serial databases.
Deliverables
In its first phase, project CASA has produced the following reports and specifications which are of wider interest:
User requirements no.2
Bibliographic information flows no. 3
Yellow Pages analysis no. 4
Test Plan no 5
Copyright issues no.8
Overall pilot plan no. 10
Site specifications no. 11
Stage 1 consolidation report no. 12
All these reports can be consulted on the CASA website.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
Data not availableFunding Scheme
CSC - Cost-sharing contractsCoordinator
40126 Bologna
Italy