NACSIS-ELS: NACSIS Electronic Library System

Introduction

NACSIS has developed an electronic library system as its next-generation academic information service on the internet. The operational prototype NACSIS Electronic Library System (NACSIS-ELS) has been available for trial service since February, 1995.

What is NACSIS-ELS?

NACSIS-ELS is a newly developed scientific information system which provides primary information such as journal pages as well as conventional bibliographic databases through wide-area networks. The present NACSIS-ELS has the following features:

1. NACSIS-ELS stores primary information from scientific journals published by the Information Processing Society of Japan (IPSJ), the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers of Japan (IEICEJ), and the Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan (IEEJ). Journal pages are captured in raster image format.
2. NACSIS-ELS also stores secondary information such as catalog information of journals and bibliographic information of scientific papers appearing in journals.
3. Page images and bibliographic information are combined to implement integrated access to scientific journals. Users can obtain primary information using multiple search methods.

Therefore, in short, NACSIS-ELS is an integrated system which functions as a conventional document delivery service as well as an online information retrieval service. Users can retrieve documents using bibliographic information such as titles, author names, or abstracts. Moreover, users can also browse through monitor-displayed pages of journals and then print out those of interest.

Trial Service

To evaluate the system performance of NACSIS-ELS, trial service was initiated in February 1995. To use NACSIS-ELS, users have to install client software on their workstations. This software is distributed through anonymous FTP from NACSIS. Users must have internet access to the NACSIS database server. Sun Microsystems workstations with SunOS 4.1.x or Solaris 2.x operating systems are the only hardware platforms supported for now. OpenWindows and the X Window System are the Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) supported by the NACSIS-ELS client software.

Those who are interested in NACSIS-ELS are welcome to apply for a NACSIS-ELS monitor by sending an e-mail to els@nacsis.ac.jp. Since NACSIS-ELS stores copyrighted materials, user registration is required even for trial usage.

What NACSIS plans for fiscal year 1995

Based on user evaluation of system functionality and performance, further development is being carried out to offer a fully functional service. To this end the following items are scheduled for this year in the system development project:

1. To increase the number of academic societies participating in this project. We expect more than 10 societies will cooperate with NACSIS for database compilation.
2. To release a debugged version of the present NACSIS-ELS client software. (Scheduled for June 1995)
3. To change the database server from the present computer to the SPARCcenter 2000E computer system which was newly acquired by the NACSIS Chiba Annex in February. (Scheduled for July 1995)
4. To distribute HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) based gateway software. We expect to release this in November 1995. This software allow users to access NACSIS-ELS through Mosaic or Netscape browsers on workstations running Unix, Windows, or MacOS. Almost all the functionality of NACSIS-ELS will be implemented on this HTML gateway. (Scheduled for November 1996)
5. To release the 2nd version of the client and server software of NACSIS-ELS. Upgraded functionality, identified during the trial service, is to be implemented. (Scheduled for January 1996)