Kent Fitch, AustLit Project AustLit Project, Academy Library, UNSW@ADFA, Australian Defence Force Academy, Canberra, ACT, 2600. Email: k.fitch@adfa.edu.au

Overview of AustLit

• a database of bibliographic citations and a developing body of full text for almost 400 000 Australian creative and critical works, and to biographical and organisational information on more than 50 000 Australian authors and literary organisations.

• for more information:
  • http://www.austlit.edu.au
  • poster session at this conference: Subject Gateways supported by the University of Queensland Library
  • another paper at this conference: Taking RDF and Topic Maps seriously - what happens when you drink the Kool Aid

History

• 1980's card catalogue created at ADFA

• 1987 telnet service to subscribers

• 1992 published CD's

• 1998 web service

• late 1998 UNSW@ADFA, UQ, Monash, Flinders, Deakin, UWA, Canberra, Sydney plus NLA planned a joint application for an Australian Research Council 'Research Infrastructure and Equipment Fund' grant to establish an Australian Literature Subject Gateway. The aim: ensure that all known resources could be described in a single information space, and to reduce duplication of effort.

• 1999 grant submitted, successful

• May 2000 technical analysis & design started

• Feb 2001 basic system implemented, training for content maintainers

• Sep 2001 data conversion and thesaurus mostly complete

• Oct 2001 public access

Content Maintenance Environment

• very low budget (academic setting)

• many people (mostly part time) at many locations across Australia

• client must be trivial to install, simple to use, support WYSIWYG "rich text", provide instant feedback, minimise data entry mistakes

• must support complex data model (FRBR + Harmony events as "first class objects")

• must facilitate ongoing changes and customisation

• must provide online context-sensitive help

• must support review of work by content managers and basic workflow

A Web-based solution

• trivial to install/manage, but can it provide the functionality?

• yes, by taking advantage of:
  • shipping XML to and from the client

  • dynamic generation of HTML forms based on schema definitions of the XML

  • extensive client side scripting

  • background HTTP connections to the server to provide data lookups and "favourite" lists

• "CSIRO Online" (the main CSIRO web site) content management system also uses a schema driven approach, but the schema are processed on the server to produce standard HTML streams to and from the client

Demonstration

• online Maintenance [no public access]

• if a network connection is unavailable, page snapshots:
  • View Patrick White

  • Edit Patrick White

  • View Voss

  • Edit Voss

  • Review 1

  • Review 2

About the Presenter

Kent Fitch has worked as a programmer for over 20 years. Trained in Unix at UNSW in the 1970's, he has worked in applications, database, networks, systems programming using a wide variety of tools. Since 1983 he has been a principal of the 3 person Canberra software development company, Project Computing Pty Ltd. He has developed many successful commercial systems and communications packages and custom software for many clients. He has been developing software for web sites since 1993 and currently specialises in Java programming, applications of XML and RDF/Topic Maps and web based user interfaces. Aside from AustLit, Kent contributes to open source projects and is currently working on a web site archiver.