Z39.50 and the Wellcome Library catalogue

Z39.50 is an international standard for communication between computer systems, primarily library and information-related systems.

The Library catalogue can be searched using the Z39.50 protocol. Access and attribute details needed to configure a Z39.50 client to search the catalogue are given below.

Accessing the Z39.50 server
What parts of Z39.50 are supported?
Record syntaxes
Record character set
Supported attributes
Use attributes
Relational attributes
Position attributes
Structure attributes
Truncation attributes
Completeness attributes
Searching and Boolean operators
Diagnostic messages
Z39.50 searching using EndNote bibliographic software
Contact information

Accessing the Z39.50 server
IP address: 83.244.194.134
Port no: 210
Database name = INNOPAC
No username or password is needed.

What parts of Z39.50 are supported?

• Version 2 or version 3 of the Z39.50 protocol
• Query types 0 and 1
• Initialisation, Scan, Search, and Present
• Result Set Naming
• Compliance with Level 0 in all three Functional Areas of the Bath Profile

Bibliographic, item and holdings information is sent to Z39.50 clients when the Z39.50 server receives requests in the OPAC (OID 1.2.840.10003.5.102) or SUTRS (OID 1.2.840.10003.5.101) format. For the OPAC format, if the Z39.50 client specifies the value BRIEF for the element set, the Z39.50 server returns bibliographic and holdings information only.

Not supported

• Resource Control, Passwords, and Authentication

Record syntaxes
Records can be returned using MARC 21, SUTRS, XML or OPAC format. If no format is specified in the request sent to the server, the default of MARC 21 will be returned.

Record character set
Records use the ISO-8859-1 (Latin1) character set.

Supported attributes
Details of supported attributes are below. Our Z39.50 server uses attribute checking, and will only accept search requests that contain supported attributes. If it receives a search request that contains unsupported attribute(s), the Z39.50 server will send the Z39.50 client a diagnostic message.

Use attributes
Author (1003) - any author name, be it personal, corporate or conference
Personal name (1) - name in the author or subject fields
Corporate name (2) and Conference name (3) - corporation or conference as an author or subject of a work
Title (4), Title series (5), Title Uniform (6)
Any (1016) and Anywhere (1035) - searches for the words in all the indexes
ISBN (7) - searches for International Standard Book Numbers
ISSN (8) - searches for International Standard Serial Numbers
Subject heading (21) - Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)
Subject heading (25) - Medical Subject Headings (MeSH)

All requests sent to the Z39.50 server must include a Use attribute.

Relational attributes
Only value 3 (Equal) is supported. If this attribute is not included in the request or is set to 0, the Z39.50 server defaults to 3 (Equal).

Position attributes
Values 1 (First in field) and 3 (Any position in field) are supported. If this attribute is not included in the request or is set to 0, the Z39.50 server defaults to 1 (First in field).

Structure attributes
Values 1 (Phrase), 2 (Word), and 6 (Word list) are supported. If this attribute is not included in the request or is set to 0, the Z39.50 server defaults to 1 (Phrase).

Truncation attributes
Values 1 (Right truncation) and 100 (No truncation) are supported. If this attribute is not included in the request or is set to 0, the Z39.50 server defaults to 1 (Right truncation).

Completeness attributes
The Z39.50 server supports value 1 (Incomplete subfields). If this attribute is not included in the request or is set to 0, the Z39.50 server defaults to 1 (Incomplete subfields).

Searching and Boolean operators
The following Boolean operators are supported:

• and
• or
• not

Diagnostic messages
If the Z39.50 server is unable to perform the search, it sends a diagnostic message to the Z39.50 client. The Z39.50 server supports the diagnostic messages specified in the Bib-1 Diagnostics set. For information on these messages, consult the Bib-1 Diagnostics website.

Z39.50 searching using EndNote bibliographic software
An EndNote connection file has been created for searching our catalogue, and is available for download. This file was created by a library user, and we are unable to provide support in its use. However, any comments or corrections can be sent to the contact below and will be passed on to the file creator. The Wellcome Library does not actively promote use of EndNote or any other bibliographic software.
Download EndNote connection file.

Contact information
If you have any questions or comments about our Z39.50 server, please email the Systems Strategy team: SystemsStrategy@wellcome.ac.uk.