Developing a health sciences library Gopher: more involved than meets the eye.

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the development of the Health Sciences Library Gopher at St. Louis University (SLU) Health Sciences Center. The authors will outline university criteria from the Office of Computing and Information Services, library selection criteria, bibliographical access, reference and instructional implications, data entry and maintenance, and the role of the library's Internet Committee. All libraries have been awed by the tremendous amount of resources available through the Internet; the challenge is to not be intimidated but to be innovative in designing systems that can present these resources to the library client in the most easily understandable approaches possible. The Internet Committee in the SLU Health Sciences Center Library has designed a framework for the construction of "menus" to lead the client to selected Internet resources. Some of the issues confronted include relating the Internet resources to the library's Collection Development Policy, coordination of Internet resources to other bibliographic sources (Journal Holdings List, Intelligent Catalog), and educating staff and clients to manage a wide range of new resources as well as traditional ones in electronic formats.