A study on the hypercatalog applying bibliographic relationships: a gateway to information in a networked environment

Current library catalogs do not fulfill users' needs for navigating freely from one record to related records. They also fail to meet the second objective of the library catalog either because of the generic defect of current linking devices and omission of virtual copies. The application of hypertext system to the traditional library catalog is suggested for a solution, because this type of OPAC system is able to present links in a more user-friendly way. The new system is named hypercatalog. An expanded USMARC format is suggested for data structure of the hypercatalog. The hypercatalog is expected to be able to offer an appropriate interface to present links for related bibliographic records for both of Web resources and traditional library resources. The end users activate these links after a query using the hit as the starting point merely clicking one of links on the full bibliographic record screen