Database-Driven Websites

The increasing importance of the virtual library carries with it the necessity of constructing a Website that is well organized, easy to use, and rich in content. However that may be, it does not take a jeweler's eye to detect that library Websites are often deeply flawed. The advent of library portals promises to significantly improve and simplify these sites, but a corollary development must occur alongside such a portal: the creation of Websites that are not dependent on hundreds, even thousands, of static HTML pages. Database-driven Websites obviate the need for manually coding each of the possibly thousands of pages comprising a site. Instead, data are entered once into a database, which then dynamically creates appropriate pages based on the search terms entered by the user. Websites based on static HTML pages require skilled coders not only for the initial creation of the pages but also for their revision when the content or URLs change. Processing and storing all these pages taxes even the most robust server. Websites that are database-driven usually require only a few files to serve as templates, which are then populated with content taken from the database. Knowledge of HTML is not needed to add data into the database, thereby eliminating the need for an ever-increasing number of coders on the library staff. But perhaps the greatest benefit of a database-driven Website is that its implementation then makes possible a library portal. Database-Driven Websites is a compilation of articles describing how librarians have used the database approach to improve access to the resources and services available on their Websites. The editor, Kristin Antelman, has long advocated such an approach and her article “Getting out of the HTML Business: The Database-Driven Website Solution” [1] is required reading for librarians wishing to boost the usefulness and efficiency of their Websites. The book concentrates throughout on specific applications of the database approach. Each article is written by a different author or authors, and each, except for the shared theme, is a discrete entity that refers neither to the articles before nor after it. Antelman's brief and rather perfunctory preface does not succeed in unifying these articles or in bringing them together so that the reader feels that he or she is reading a book rather than a collection of journal articles. In fact, the articles appear, in exactly the same form, in volume 7, number 1/2, of Internet Reference Services Quarterly. The book would have greatly benefited from a longer preface that introduces the reader to certain general or overarching characteristics common to all database-driven Websites. Antelman's “Getting out of the HTML Business” could have served this purpose. In the absence of such an introduction, the reader is immediately in media res, and the succession of very specific applications the authors describe makes it difficult for the reader to construct a set of general principles about the subject. In the case of someone with no previous knowledge of database-driven Websites, these principles are arrived at only after the most arduous work. That this effort is needed at all is not surprising since the editor leaves the reader entirely to his or her own devices. The lack of a conclusion summarizing the lessons learned, the strengths and weaknesses of the approach, and the commonalities and peculiarities is also sorely missed. In brief, then, this is not a book for neophytes. For the reader already familiar with the topic, the book might prove stimulating and helpful. The articles cover a variety of applications that are certain to suggest beguiling alternatives to an approach based on static HTML pages. Of special interest in this time of decreasing budgets are several articles that describe database-driven resources constructed using free software (Thomas McMillan Grant Bennett's “Appalachian State University Libraries ‘Ask a Librarian’” and Mary Platt's “Databases to the Web: From Static to Dynamic on the Express”) or by repurposing an easy to use and relatively inexpensive bibliographic citation program (Ann Koopman's “Bibliographic Citation Management Software for Web Applications”). ColdFusion is the program of choice for many librarians who have switched to a database-driven approach; its role in converting to a complex portal of health information resources is described by Brian Westra (“Healthlinks: A Cold Fusion Application”) and by Karen Hein and Marc Davis (“The Research Wizard: An Innovative Web Application”). The use of database-driven Web resources as a means of offering new services is suggested by Karen Underhill and Bruce Palmer's article on digital archives (“Archival Content Anywhere @ Anytime”) and by Kristine Ogilvie and John Jewell's article on creating a portal to the state of California's Web resources (“Partnering to Build a State Portal: My California”). Database-Driven Websites is not the first book on the subject that a novice reader should read. Such a book would include an introduction that prepares the reader for what is to follow and that primes his or her understanding, and it would not only offer transitional remarks to facilitate moving from one chapter to the next and foster a sense of unity or wholeness, but also provide a conclusion that summarizes and makes sense of what has gone before. For the reader who is already fairly proficient in this area, the purchase of this book may spare him or her the minor inconvenience of tracking down volume 7, number 1/2 of Internet Reference Services Quarterly.