LC Announces TrackER Software Availability and Specifications

At the ALCTS Electronic Resources Interest Group meeting at ALA Annual 2004 in Orlando, Florida, staff from the Library of Congress presented the workflow for electronic resources, and provided a live demonstration on their online electronic resources tracking system named TrackER. Many in attendance were interested in this software to use at their own institutions. The Library of Congress is willing to provide it, but recommends that the minimum systems requirement information be shared with interested institutions' IT staff to ensure that TrackER is adaptable. Before investing the resources to adjust the software for distribution, LC needs to know if there is truly a demand for this product.

TrackER ( Tracking Electronic Resources) is the Library of Congress' online traffic manager for recommending, selecting and tracking the remote-access electronic resources that are in the processing work stream. It is a program that provides for the electronic transfer of information about the resource being processed throughout the various work units that handle it. TrackER is essential to the efficient workflow of electronic resources. Phase one has been in production since April 2003, but TrackER is still a work in progress.

The TrackER PowerPoint presentation can be accessed from either http://www.loc.gov/catdir/ or http://www.loc.gov/catdir/TrackERALA2004.ppt.

If your library has a serious interest in using the TrackER software please send your name, job title, institution, and phone number to Susan Leister at Rice University, who will be collecting responses and forwarding them on to the Library of Congress. For questions related to TrackER please contact Allene Hayes, Digital Projects Coordinator at the Library of Congress. See information below for more details.

TrackER system configuration:

• TrackER is an application that uses the Oracle9i database. Currently running on Oracle9i, but it was developed as Oracle8i and there are no features particular to Oracle9i currently in use.
  
• LC runs the TrackER application on an RS type machine using the AIX version of UNIX. The application should work on any machine that can support Oracle9i, including servers with the Windows NT operating system.
  
• TrackER is a web application and uses the Oracle web server to interface between the user and the Oracle database.
  
• All application code is written in Oracle's PL/SQL.
  
• Some utility programs are written in the UNIX script language.