Z39.50 gateway to NLM

Guys,

For reasons of my own, I have need of accessing the National Library of 
Medicine Medline (PubMed) via Z39.50, so I have tossed together a small 
gateway using the Entrez utilities that John Kunze referred to. I'd like to 
make it available to others who might enjoy it.

The database lives at z39.50s://muffin.indexdata.dk:9014/pubmed

Record formats: XML (that's the summary format straight out of Entrez) and 
MARC21, through my feeble attempt at a mapping. The parts that are right 
are due to Rebecca Guenther who patiently answered my questions about 
journal citations in MARC. The parts that are wrong are due to my ignorance 
and laziness.

Element set names "B" and "F". In XML, these do the same. In MARC, "F" runs 
a little slower but adds 856 fields with the full-text links where available.

USE Attribiutes (and Entrez mappings):

                      4           => "TITL"
                     12          => "UID"
                     21          => "MESH"
                     25          => "MESH"
                     31          => "PDAT"
                     54          => "LANG"
                     1003        => "AUTH"
                     1016        => "ALL"
                     1033        => "JOUR"
                     1066        => "VOL"

Other attributes (first choice is default):

Trucation: None or right. Position: Any in field. Structure: Word, phrase, 
year, and name unnormalised. Completeness: Incomplete subfield.

Although the gateway tries to minimize transatlantic gobbledegook by 
caching things a little for each session, it would run faster if it were 
housed at or near the NLM. As suggested by John Kunze, I will be monitoring 
the traffic level a little bit, and if it seems like a service people come 
back to, I will give the package to the NLM if they want it.

Feedback on the attribute mapping, the record format handling and such 
would be very welcome (please send them to me off the list). I'll try to 
work in any feedback, so consider the server to bein a beta test stage for 
awhile.

Happy new year to everyone,

--Sebastian
--
Sebastian Hammer        <quinn@indexdata.dk>            Index Data ApS
Ph.: +45 3341 0100    <http://www.indexdata.dk>    Fax: +45 3341 0101

Received on Friday, 5 January 2001 06:50:02 UTC