Z39.50 profile

Z39.50 is an ANSI/NISO standard protocol for information retrieval. It has been widely deployed in libraries, and has also found applications in areas as diverse as geospatial searching, cultural heritage, and searching databases of complex chemical compounds.

The Zthes Profile for Z39.50 provides a set of specifications prescribing the use of Z39.50 to navigate remote thesauri. A Z39.50 server conforming to this profile can expose its thesaurus to any conforming client, enabling its use in many applications.

The current version of the the Zthes Z39.50 profile is version 1.0 [changes]

Prior to version 1.0, the Zthes Z39.50 profile was the core specification on this site, and included the abstract model as its Section 2. Versions prior to 0.5 also included the XML specifications as Appendix B. Because the older versions of the profile with much broader in scope, and consequently much longer and differently structured, they are maintained separately in the Historical Profile section.