Chapter 1: Introduction

iVia is a software package for building and presenting virtual libraries of Internet resources. Librarians can use it to build a database of metadata records, either manually or by employing its many record building, metadata assignment and focused crawling tools. The virtual library itself is search-able and browse-able through a standard Web browser, and can be presented with any number of data views.

iVia was developed by the iVia Project at the Library of the University of California, Riverside as the engine for the INFOMINE Scholarly Internet Resource Collections (http://infomine.ucr.edu/). iVia is free software, distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License although various libraries are under the LGPL.

The current version of iVia is version 5. This software was developed, under the guidance of Project Director Steve Mitchell, by the iVia programmers:

though much Free Software created by other authors was reused.

This manual describes the iVia software for system administrators. It begins with an overview of the iVia system, then explains how to install and maintain the software. iVia, like this manual, is a work in progress; please let us know if of any problems you have with either.