Use of the OSI Directory for accessing bibliographic information Available to Purchase

An OSI (Open Systems Interconnection) Directory Service has recently been standardised in accord with the CCITT's X.500 recommendations. This OSI Directory (or X.500 Directory — the terms are used interchangeably) was developed with the priMary intention of providing support for electronic mail services, address look‐up of networked applications, and also white and yellow pages directory services. However, the OSI Directory has many of the features required for providing access to widely distributed bibliographic information. It offers the possibility of a unified bibliographic information framework; homogeneous access to bibliographic information; built‐in facilities for distributed searching; ‘natural’ integration with other OSI services which may be used to provide bibliographic services, for example, electronic mail and file transfer. This paper first provides a brief tutorial on the OSI Directory. The paper then considers how the OSI Directory might be used to provide access to a range of bibliographic information, and be used in tandem with other OSI services to allow the retrieval of documents. The paper then examines some of the problems of providing access to bibliographic information given the current version of the X.500 standard. A project (ABDUX — Accessing Bibliographic Data Using X.500) to investigate some of the ideas described in this paper is being funded by the British Library, and the paper notes the goals of this project.