Re: Standard Digital Libraries
Maria Daniels (mailto:maria@PERSEUS.TUFTS.EDU)
Thu, 28 Mar 1996 14:34:04 -0500
Message-Id: <mailto:199603281941.NAA00700@library.wustl.edu>
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 1996 14:34:04 -0500
From: Maria Daniels <mailto:maria@PERSEUS.TUFTS.EDU>
Subject: Re: Standard Digital Libraries
To: Multiple recipients of list IMAGELIB
One point which should be made regarding standardization of data
is that the structuring of the data, if done carefully, will
allow for its use across multiple operating systems and in various
applications. Linda McRae's comment about converting MARC records
to HTML documents is a perfect illustration. At Perseus we store
data in 4th Dimension on the Mac, marked up with SGML tags. This
data has at various times been exported into HyperCard, put on a
Windows-based prototype Perseus, and most recently uploaded to a
UNIX server which provides the data for our WWW site. The hard part
was cataloguing and tagging; now that the data is fairly clean it
has been easy to get it into the applications which will be of most
use to us. (Some of the art historians who cataloged objects for
Perseus worked in FileMaker, on both Macs and PCs, incidentally,then
the data was imported into 4D.)
Museum curators, registrars, and education departments probably have
slightly different needs and requirements than we; Perseus does have
a full-time programmer! But the SGML tagging plans and the 4D
database were built by a classicist and an art historian here. If
I were starting over I would make sure the application I used for my
primary database allowed for very flexible selection and exporting,
and made it easy for me to move all the data out into another program
when that became necessary. 4D has been perfect in that regardm
although its learning curve is steep.
Just my $0.02...
Maria Daniels
Perseus Project
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/