Here's another reminder: if you post a message with a subject like this it's
not going to be part of the "record" of discussion (not part of the easily
discoverable record anyway).

Look at:
http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/zing/srw/srw1-1-proposals.html
in the ref column, for Scan, click on the reference and you'll get the initial
message, and there's a button to scroll through the thread, but the subjects
have to be either "Scan" or "Re: Scan".

--Ray

Joe Zeeman wrote:

> Let me try to describe the situation I have in mind fairly clearly.  I have
> a relational database.  It has a table of "access points".  This table is
> the "index" to the bibliographic records.  It is also the "index" to the
> authority records.  The rows in the table tell you what the search terms
> are in my database.  They also tell you (through a bit of XML magic) when a
> search term is a reference to another search term.  So, when someone does a
> scan, I return data from this table. And only from this table.  I think it
> is helpful to the user to include the reference information that I already
> have in the table.  It is no effort for me to do so; in fact it is
> significant effort for me to exclude the reference information.
>
> I don't want scan to preclude this behaviour.  And the single "alternative
> term" element doesn't have rich-enough semantics to let me express the
> variety of references I already have.
>
> I can also, if I want, use this table to collapse and expand heading
> hierarchies because each row has a hierarchical level indicator and a
> pointer to it's parent if it's not a root.  So I can easily use this table
> to do simple thesaural navigation.  I don't have a separate thesaurus
> database.  I don't have a strong requirement to do this right now, but I
> can see how it will be useful in the future.
>
> If I wanted to refer to a separate database that could be used to provide
> thesaural access or a finding aid to the data in this database, then I
> agree, this would be outside the scope of scan.
>
> j.