Abstract
The H.W. Wilson Company is presenting a new online information system. The Wilson system is an electronic editorial support system currently utilized by the Wilson staff of subject specialists, catalogers, and professional indexers. The system was designed to provide editorial management of Wilson indexes, and online and offline retrieval capabilities through powerful search and retrieval commands available in the Wilsonline retrieval system. The characteristics of the system as currently used by our professional staff are described in this paper.
The Wilson Company has prepared this technical description of the Wilson system to keep potential users informed of our automation efforts, which will improve the timeliness, currency, and quality of the Wilson indexes. The authority validation used by the Wilson system, for example, guarantees and enhances the integrity of the indexing data which our customers have come to depend on in the printed index. This level of quality is further maintained in all electronic versions of the Wilson indexes.
It is Wilson's intent to keep the library community abreast of its technological developments, and to incorporate suggested changes during the developmental process. The capabilities described in this document represent the system as it is actually being used today by Wilson staff. The company will continue to develop and expand the Wilsonline online search and retrieval capabilities in order to provide libraries with high quality data-base and printed indexes.