Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog (KVK) is a book

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

administered by the library of the

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology The Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT; german: Karlsruher Institut für Technologie) is a public research university in Karlsruhe, Germany. The institute is a national research center of the Helmholtz Association. KIT was created in 2009 w ...

. It was developed by KIT-Library in 1996 and continuously expanded and adapted since. It searches a large number of catalogs of research libraries and consortia in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

, and

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

, as well as important consortia and national

library catalog A library catalog (or library catalogue in British English) is a register of all bibliographic items found in a library or group of libraries, such as a network of libraries at several locations. A catalog for a group of libraries is also c ...

s in other countries. Beyond that it also searches open access and digital media search engines and catalogs. It is said to encompass more than 600 million books and serial publications.

Technology

In order to be able to search many catalogs at the same time, the KVK team has created a CGI program, which initially reformulates the terms entered in the KVK search form for each of the target catalogs according to their requirements. The program then For each WWW search interface of the target catalogs, a structure description file is provided which allows the CGI program to be entered. The structure description file describes the structure of the respective search form and the structure of the resulting hit lists. Important information about the search form is the names of the WWW server, the search fields, and the CGI program of the target catalog that performs the search. The CGI program of the KVK then transfers the search queries in the KVK in the correct syntax to the correct fields of the target catalog. Important elements of the hit list are the short titles of the hits and the URL links to the full title dis.

References

* Michael Mönnich: ''KVK. A Meta Catalog of Libraries''. In: ''High Energy Physics Libraries Webzine'', Band 2, 2000
ISSN 1424-2729
leicht abgewandelt erschienen in: ''Liber Quarterly'', Band 11, Heft 2, 2001, S. 121–127
o
'Mehrwertdienste durch Virtuelle Kataloge. 5 Jahre Karlsruher Virtueller Katalog''. In: ''b.i.t.online'', Heft 3, 2001

* Uwe Dierolf: ''KVK goes Salt Lake City''. In: ''b.i.t.online'', Heft 4, 2002

External links

Library catalogues Education in Karlsruhe 1996 introductions Search engine software {{library-stub