-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hello,

I'd like to announce the publication of the IWF Metadata Harvester.

This package reads data from servers, writes it to databases,
implements various kinds of searches, and writes HTML files to display
the results. It currently handles data from two kinds of interface:
OAI (Open Archives Initiative), which provides XML, and Z39.50, using
the Pica format.

The IWF Metadata Harvester is Free Software.  The program code is
published under the terms of the GNU General Public License, and the
documentation under those of the GNU Free Documentation License.
It is available from the following FTP server:
http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/gnu2/iwfmdh/
I am currently looking into the possibility of having the package
hosted on a website for software developers.

The IWF Metadata Harvester has been developed on a system running
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and using Visual Studio, Visual C++ .NET
and Microsoft SQL Server 2000.  However, I have tried to make it as
portable as possible under the circumstances by avoiding the ATL
and MFC types, classes, etc., as much as I could.  However, it has not
been possible to do without them completely.  More recent code uses
them less.  I hope that it will be possible to use the files of SQL
code with free database packages without too many alterations.  I plan
to port the package to GNU/Linux myself at the earliest opportunity.

I have used Donald Knuth and Silvio Levy's CWEB package for the C++
code, so that pretty-printed versions of the programs are included in
the package:
http://ftp.gwdg.de/pub/gnu2/iwfmdh/doc
This directory also contains the manual, which has been written using
the Texinfo package.  It is available in the following formats:
DVI, PostScript, PDF, and HTML.

Because the IWF Metadata Harvester is Free Software, libraries,
archives, or any other providers of metadata could make it available to
users with no purchase, registration, special license arrangements, or
(subject to local laws) liability.

The IWF Metadata Harvester is a work-in-progress.  I would be very
interested to know whether any libraries, archives, other
institutions, businesses, or private persons would find it useful.

Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Laurence Finston

IWF Wissen und Medien gGmbH
Nonnenstieg 72
37075 Goettingen
Germany




-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.5 (MingW32)

iD8DBQFFPh4JxdFhoXcLhfgRAr/xAJ0W9AreQ9gn1W25wxr9PBdLoTcZxgCfZ30w
dxtM5ObQg9kZ31RHsJ5bLbA=
=bVlS
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----