Telnet Melvyl Retired

By Ellen Meltzer, CDL Information Services Manager

As a reminder, Telnet Melvyl ceased as of August 31, 2007. In 2003, the UC campus libraries launched a new version of the Melvyl Catalog based on software from Ex Libris, running on the IBM AIX platform. Both the Web and Telnet versions of the catalog were maintained. Now, in 2007, the catalog is being upgraded to a newer version of the Ex Libris software, running on a Sun Solaris platform. Maintaining the Telnet interface to Melvyl, which was little used by UC students, faculty, and staff, would have been prohibitively expensive, due to the change from IBM to Sun hardware. The Telnet software version CDL ran did not support the Sun platform and would have required a significant investment in staff time and resources to set up and maintain.

With input from the UC Heads of Public Services (HOPS), Heads of Technical Services (HOTS), and Collection Development Committee (CDC), and in consultation with library staff, it was decided to cease production of the Telnet version of Melvyl on August 31, 2007 because of the technical difficulty and expense of maintaining it.

Users who desire the flexibility of command line searching can use the Command Search feature available on the web version of the Melvyl Catalog. Command searching is the most effective way to perform complex searches as it affords a great deal of control over the search results.

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