AsianDOC Electronic Newsletter 1:1(March 1998)
Databases of the East Asian Libraries Cooperative WWW
by Maureen Donovan
URL http://pears.lib.ohio-state.edu
The EALCWWW's goal is to support research on East Asia by creating electronic resources and developing web-based information services through cooperation among librarians, scholars and researchers, and by mirroring resources developed elsewhere to facilitate access.
From its very beginning in 1994, constructing web databases to enhance bibliographic access to East Asian research materials has been a major focus of the project. Koyo Hasebe, Graduate Research Associate for the project since June 1995, has explored various approaches. Over time he has gradually developed a flexible database design strategy that meets the current needs of the project and will allow migration to future software environments. In particular, Mr. Hasebe has met the challenges of:
- supporting distributed content development, while at the same time maintaining tight security;
- importing data from diverse sources and/or from web forms-based input, and building editing mechanisms that expedite tedious follow-up editing;
- providing sophisticated searches that have straightforward, easy-to-use interfaces.
Current database projects include:
- Gekkan New Policy Contents Database.
A searchable Japanese language database of the tables of contents of the monthly publication, Gekkan New Policy. The contents of each issue can be viewed and the contents can be searched by key words (in Japanese) with Boolean operators. The database is regularly updated.
- Japanese Company Histories Database
Bibliographic database of Japanese company histories, with links to the Ohio State University Libraries catalog. This database was originally constructed using ProCite (R) software. Data was exported to make web pages which are still mounted since they are very widely linked. Recently the data was compiled into this searchable database, which is easier to update than the web pages are. We are currently studying our options for the future evolution of this database.
- Kinema Club Database
A bibiography of books and articles on Japanese cinema, this database was constructed from untagged data. As a result, it needs quite a bit of editing -- a process that is currently underway. Abe' Mark Nornes of the University of Michigan initiated and directs this project.
- Union List of Japanese Serials
A bibliographic database constructed from records imported from library catalogs, as well as from direct input via web forms. This project is at an early stage of development, but a brief report of progress was recently issued to participants in the Association of Research Libraries Japanese Journal Access Project.
In addition to those four major projects, a number of other databases are still in discussion or planning stages.
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