Creating Web‐accessible Databases: Case Studies for Libraries, Museums and other Nonprofits

Citation

Eaton, J. (2002), "Creating Web‐accessible Databases: Case Studies for Libraries, Museums and other Nonprofits", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 36 No. 3, pp. 208-209. https://doi.org/10.1108/prog.2002.36.3.208.3

This collection of essays has been compiled to provide a blueprint for libraries and other bodies wishing to make proprietary files or indexes of material available on the Internet as a searchable database. The editor remarks in her introduction that such “home‐made files” may have a long history, often starting out as printed or handwritten lists that later were transferred to a standalone PC database of a kind now considered obsolete. Alternatively, libraries may have conceived more ambitious projects covering not only bibliographic metadata, but also digitisation of material, often involving collaboration with other partners. However, the common experience of such database migration or creation – to which this book attests – is that considerable effort, planning and review are all required before, during and after the project. Moreover, the task is not limited to programming: executive decisions must be made, covering such topics as content management policy, personnel and skill requirements in building project teams, and the viability of undertaking work in‐house as opposed to contracting out, to list only a few.

In adopting a “case study” approach, the editor has sought an informal approach from the contributors in order to focus on experience gained from a number of academic and commercial bibliographic and full‐text Web database projects undertaken in North America. Although some mention is made of underlying database technologies and specific software packages, this is emphatically not a technical primer. Contributions include projects in US academic and public libraries, online booksellers, a commercial database publisher, user interface and behaviour considerations, and a final chapter on the significance of XML. Although quality does inevitably vary (one or two authors’ narratives bog down in irrelevant detail, and there is a disappointing chapter on metadata), the different narratives combine well to offer considerable encouragement, provide helpful planning and project management precepts and warn of pitfalls along the way.

The key topic of access control is glossed over too easily: there is a naive assumption that Web database content will be freely available to any user, whereas the practical reality of copyright frequently demands user access controls and security for content areas on Web servers. Some, but not all, chapters conclude with brief bibliographies, and there is a good ten‐page index. There is one major, unexplained (and often irritating) omission: there is not a single figure, illustrative diagram or even screenshot for any of the Web databases described in the chapters contained in this book.

Ronald Jantz (Rutgers University) provides a good keynote essay that not only examines technical topics but also covers more information architectural techniques such as database design and “code reuse”, and significant issues such as digital archiving. Vicky Speck of ABC‐CLIO (the publisher of Historical Abstracts and America: History and Life) provides an excellent account of how this commercial database vendor approached its own Web version project, building on its experiences with developing its products in CD‐ROM format from the early 1990s. This entertaining chapter candidly describes not only the project planning process but also gives valuable insights into the key differences in user interface design that differentiate the Web user interface from that deployed in CD‐ROM products.

This latter theme is subsequently picked up by Laura Spencer (Rutgers University) in her essay “What price simplicity: a user‐centred meditation” in which she offers some thoughtful views on user interface design issues based on everyday experience in supporting student users of Web database services. Describing the way universities now provide clean, simple (but also “flat”) Web pages hosting links to multiple Web databases, she forcefully and vividly argues that “[t]he collapse of physical space that is the genius of the electronic environment has inadvertently exacerbated the user’s natural state of confusion”. She makes a good comparative point: that CD‐ROM interfaces’ general opacity and difficulty in use required greater time and thought in constructing and reviewing the search. By contrast, the Web interface’s apparent clarity offers a false promise of minimising the need (which is of course undiminished) to think about the search topic and experiment, hence the common complaint from users that Web‐based services do not save them the time they had anticipated.

Richard Gartner (Bodleian Library, Oxford) in the final chapter, “XML: a way ahead for the library database?” offers us a timely warning from library automation history as an essential corrective to the enthusiastic proliferation of database‐backed Web bibliographic projects. He notes that the situation now is redolent of library cataloguing practice in the era before the establishment and adoption of standards such as MARC and AACR2 at the end of the 1960s. The experiences of Oxford University in its early digitisation work confirms that without clear and common standardisation of information formats, Web databases remain highly diverse and proprietary, lacking the kind of cross‐searching facilities common to online library catalogues. Moreover, it will prove highly difficult for such projects to inter‐operate and exchange records with each other to permit creation of logical or union catalogues. Whilst libraries may happily use Microsoft Access today, there is no guarantee it may not become obsolete in a few years. ASCII text‐based XML can emulate the MARC and AACR2 formats to create a logical and extensible information encoding framework suited to all kinds of library and other records applications. Gartner additionally asserts that XML’s fundamentally hierarchical nature makes it superior to relational database tables for those situations where data must be expressed in multiple levels.

Creating Web‐accessible Databases … can be recommended as a good, reasonably priced working introduction to the topic. Although it has some noted omissions in its coverage, there is plenty of helpful guidance and experience presented here (even though the absence of any screenshots means readers must prop the book open next to a PC screen and use a browser to see what the authors are describing!).