Mantis integrates components from SiteSearch, Kilroy, Scorpion, and other projects. Persistent Uniform Resource Locators are an effective means of managing changes to the addresses of cataloged Web resources. The OCLC PURL Service has been strongly influenced by the active participation of OCLC's Office of Research in the Internet Engineering Task Force Uniform Resource Identifier working groups. The Web Characterization Project. This ongoing study identifies, measures, and evaluates the characteristics of Web-accessible information to help researchers analyze the types of resources available and suitable for detailed description.
Scorpion explores the indexing and cataloging of electronic resources.
The project is developing a sophisticated group of tools that will support automatic assignment of subject headings based on well-known classification schemes, such as the Dewey Decimal Classification System. Kilroy provides sophisticated harvesting and analysis of Web resources based on a user-defined profile. It can output automatically generated metadata. Its leadership role as technological innovator and standards creator greatly benefits librarianship in terms of new services and in shaping the digital future of libraries. The Office of Research continues to explore more traditional areas of library endeavor such as database quality, cataloging, classification, reference services and resource sharing.