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Practical Digital Library Tools and Techniques

This guide, created by Roy Tennant at the University of California, Berkeley, offers a collection of practical, simple, inexpensive, and flexible digital tools and techniques for libraries. It includes examples of free software such as mSQL, Harvest, and SWISH-E, along with innovative projects and web resources. The focus is on accessibility and ease of use for librarians, promoting ideas that require skills rather than significant financial investment. Explore creative solutions for small-scale databases, web indexing, and more to enhance library services.

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Practical Digital Library Tools and Techniques

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  1. Practical Digital Library Tools and Techniques Roy Tennant The Library, University of California, Berkeley

  2. “Brown Paper Bag” Projects • Simple • Inexpensive (or free) • Flexible • Open (not proprietary)

  3. Example: mSQL • mSQL, a free SQL package:http://www.hughes.com.au/ • INFOMINE, UC Riverside:http://lib-www.ucr.edu/

  4. Example: Sprite • Sprite, a Perl module, see: http://www.perl.com/CPAN-local/modules/by-module/Sprite/ • Good for small (no more than a couple thousand records) flat-file databases • African American Theses & Dissertations, UCB:http://sunsite.Berkeley.EDU/Bibliographies/bibdb.html

  5. Sprite Architecture • A delimited file, one line per record: author::title::description::whatever…author::title::description::whatever… • The Sprite Perl module • A Perl program for the user interface

  6. Example: Harvest • Harvest, a free Web spider:http://www.tardis.ed.ac.uk/harvest/ • Index of library-related electronic journals, Index Morganagus:http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/IndexMorganagus/

  7. Example: SWISH-E & Perl • Librarians’ Index to the Internethttp://sunsite.berkeley.edu/InternetIndex/ • KidsClick!http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/KidsClick!/ • Digital Image Cataloghttp://sunsite.berkeley.edu/ImageCatalog/ • Reference Resourceshttp://sunsite.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/searchref.pl

  8. The Pieces • SWISH-Enhancedhttp://sunsite.berkeley.edu/SWISH-E/ • In-house Perl programssee http://www.perl.com/ for more information on Perl • Records stored in individual files using Dublin Core fields and HTML META tagssee http://purl.org/metadata/dublin_core

  9. Architecture: The Record <META NAME="DC.title" CONTENT="Sesame Street Central"> <META NAME="DC.identifier" CONTENT="http://www.sesamestreet.com/sscentral/"> <META NAME="DC.description" CONTENT="A companion to the PBS television series. Includes online games, stories, print & play activities, and a behind the scenes look at how the show is made."> <META NAME="RCLS.illustrations" CONTENT="many"> <META NAME="RCLS.readinglevel" CONTENT="zero"> <META NAME="DC.subject" CONTENT="TV networks and shows”> <META NAME="RCLS.keywords" CONTENT="Sesame Street Central A companion to the PBS television series. Includes online games, stories, print & play activities, and behind the scenes look at how the show is made. TV networks and shows”>

  10. Architecture: In-House Programs _____ User Interface Library of subroutines Maintenance Programs Perl SWISH-E Index Index records Indiv. records

  11. The Bottom Line • Avoid needless complexityKISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid! • Free software can be as good as (or better than) commercial software • Consider migration (how will you get out?) • Consider scale (will it handle growth?) • Good ideas and the skill to make them real are the essential ingredients, not money

  12. Recruitment Plug • The Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE wants a few good people to do interesting things • We’ll provide the infrastructure • You provide the ideas, time, and energy • See http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Admin/librarians.html for more information

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