CORC built using toolkit developed in Mantis project

Mantis software, developed in the OCLC Office of Research, is a toolkit for building Web-based cataloging systems with arbitrary metadata definitions and interfaces. The CORC project is a specific application built using the Mantis toolkit.

About a year ago, we in the OCLC Office of Research began seriously exploring the possibility of building a system to support the evolution of Dublin Core and experimentation with the Resource Description Framework (RDF). At the same time, we became interested in the problems of building arbitrary cataloging systems on the Web. It seemed that OCLC had much to offer in this area if we could just figure out a way to integrate several efforts already under way and find some way to unlock important features captive in larger OCLC applications. We started the Mantis research project as a means of exploring these issues.

At first, we experimented with many different Web interfaces for displaying and editing arbitrary metadata. We specifically focused on trying to find mechanisms that would let us create usable user interfaces in standard browsers. Through the course of much trial and error, we settled on a model for metadata records based on RDF and the Extensible Markup Language (XML). RDF freed us to think about building raw functionality, not specific applications. We expanded the toolkit model and began to integrate several other efforts already under way.

During the summer of 1998, the Office of Research began looking into ways to expand Mantis and come up with a "bigger" project to show the potential of the issues we were all exploring in all our research projects. CORC evolved from those discussions. And our efforts switched from general toolkit building to the building of a specific application using the toolkit.--Keith Shafer is consulting research scientist, OCLC Office of Research.