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+## The Net::Z3950::ZOOM, ZOOM and Net::Z3950 modules
+
+This distribution contains three Perl modules for the price of one.
+They all provide facilities for building information retrieval clients
+using the standard Z39.50 and SRW/U protocols, but do so using
+different APIs.
+
+- If you are new to this distribution, then you should use the ZOOM
+  API, and ignore the others.  It is the cleanest, most elegant and
+  intuitive, and most closely follows the letter as well as the spirit
+  of the Abstract ZOOM API as specified at [http://zoom.z3950.org/api/]()
+
+- If you have used the old Net::Z3950 module and have to maintain an
+  application that calls that API, then you will want to use the
+  Net::Z3950 classes provided in this distribution, which provide an
+  API compatible with the old module's implemented on top of the new
+  ZOOM code.
+
+- You should definitely not use the Net::Z3950::ZOOM API, which is not
+  object-oriented, and instead provides the thinnest possible layer on
+  top of the ZOOM-C functions in the YAZ toolkit.  This API exists
+  only in order to have ZOOM API built on top of it.
+
+
+### INSTALLATION
+
+To install this module type the following:
+
+    perl Makefile.PL
+    make
+    make test
+    make install
+
+
+### DEBIAN PACKAGES
+
+To build Debian packages issue:
+
+    dh-make-perl --build
+
+
+### DEPENDENCIES
+
+This module requires these other modules and libraries:
+
+- The YAZ toolkit for Z39.50 and SRW/U communication.  This is
+  available as a package on several platform -- for example, Debian
+  GNU/Linux supports "apt-get install yaz".  For others, you will need
+  to download and build the source-code, which is much more
+  straightforward that you probably expect.  You can get it from
+  [http://indexdata.com/yaz]()
+
+  NOTE THAT THE ZOOM-Perl MODULE ABSOLUTELY REQUIRES RELEASE 2.0.11 OR
+  BETTER OF THE YAZ TOOLKIT.  You need version 2.1.17 or better if you
+  want to run clever asynchronous programs that use the END event,
+  which did not exist prior to that release.
+
+### COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE
+
+Copyright (C) 2005-2014 by Index Data.
+
+This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
+it under the same terms as Perl itself, either Perl version 5.8.4 or,
+at your option, any later version of Perl 5 you may have available.
+
+