SCRAN (Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network) is an educational charity that makes available 300,000 images, movies and sounds from museums, galleries, archives and the media. It provides free access to its searching facilities, metadata and thumbnails; registered users can also access high-resolution images.
SCRAN recently transitioned from an older database setup to MySQL, a relational database, and it is from this database that the SCRAN web-site dynamically obtains its metadata and image filenames. SCRAN's old Z39.50 server was tied to the database it was supplied with, and does not work with the new database, so a new server was required.
Using zSQLgate, it was possible to quickly implement a new Z39.50 server that works from the MySQL database, providing full-text searching and delivering records in XML, MARC, SUTRS and GRS-1 formats. The whole process, from commissioning through development and delivery to acceptance, was completed in ten days, including the development of several new areas of functionality such as the full-text search.
The Z39.50 server is available for public use on z39.50s://www.scran.ac.uk:3950/default
Feedback to
<mike@sql.z3950.org>
is welcome!