“Descent into Chaos”

Figuring out database-driven technology for OHSU Library ejournals

Laura Zeigen, Sara Piasecki and Diane CarrollOHSU LibraryMay, 2002

Online Northwest 2001

Database-driven Web page demo Decided we needed this functionality for

access to full text articles at OHSU How hard could it be?

The Need in 2001

26 alphabetical Static Web pages for 1500 journals A second alphabet for titles in aggregator collections

(EBSCOhost). Hard to maintain. Hard for users to find information.

– Lots of scrolling.– Not efficient.

Lack of flexibility (lists by provider, subject, etc).

The Need for 2002

Business Source Premier =1500 titles ScienceDirect/Elsevier = 1200 titles (Trial) ProQuest Medical collection = 225 titles Database driven technology would allow access to

all full text titles subscribed to by the library.

The Challenge

No process yet defined at OHSU for developing database-driven Web sites.

Not even any infrastructure in place for this!

Detective work– Started to ask around and was referred to 10 different people,

none of whom knew what the others were doing.– Started collaborating with a Web Manager from another

department on the same quest, as well as (KEY!) one of the database administrators from our IT department.

Progress

Our primary criteria was that the system developed had to address two crucial issues:– It had to have a reasonable learning curve for our

Web Managers, the people in departments across campus, people who had widely divergent skill sets.

– It had to be something that our IT department could support or afford, if it was something that did not currently exist in the infrastructure.

Progress (2)

IT department database administrator and other Web Manager divided up working on a handful of prototypes to see what technology might best be suited to our environment:– PHP, an open source option– ASP, Microsoft’s product– ColdFusion with ORACLE, for which we have a site

license– ColdFusion with SQL server

Our own ejournals project

Once these IT decisions had been made, I worked with the content/database source developed by Sara and Diane to present this information on Web pages in a variety of ways.

I used NOTEPAD to create my .cfm files– I wanted to eliminate the vagaries of different programs while

we were developing. You could also use

– Macromedia DreamWeaver UltraDev– Macromedia ColdFusion Studio– Editor “HomeSite”

Greatest ChallengesWhat we learned

Trying to program the conditional logic so our OHSU workstations, OGI workstations, and Off-campus links would show up properly as being available or not was the hardest part of the whole process.

What we learned

Become familiar with SQL (“Structured Query Language”) and the basics of ColdFusion. It will help you interpret the weird error messages ColdFusion will throw up during the development process and therefore make it easier to troubleshoot where the issue may be.

What we learned (3)

Find a friendly and helpful IT person to help. If the IT database administrator had not helped us through this we would still be using static pages today!

The learning curve, even for the “easiest” option of ColdFusion, was not that easy because there was no one to guide us and no process yet in place.

– Lobby your institution to put a dbdriven Web functionality in place and this may help you for the future.

Example of the code and the pages/records it brings up

E-journals front page– Code for this page

Search results page for search on “diabetes”– Code for this page– Code for conditional logic

Now that we have the technology…

How to account for all the necessary data, and only the necessary data?

How to store the data to make it easy for ColdFusion to query?

Evolution of a spreadsheet

Some of the necessary information had already been gathered into an Excel spreadsheet:– Journal title– Provider– URLs (both on-campus, and through the off-campus

proxy server)– Dates of coverage

But we also needed…

URLs for OGI Science & Engineering Library An additional column to indicate whether the

title was OGI-specific Short description field (e.g., “Free to all”) Special instructions for access (e.g.,

“Username and password required”)

And Cold Fusion and SQL required…

ID field, a unique number generated by the SQL Server software

An ‘altTitle’ column, to work around the inability to search special characters through ColdFusion

And while we were at it…

‘trialTitle’ field, to indicate which titles were free for a limited time

‘dateAdded’ field, so lists of recently added titles can be generated

‘topic’ field, to group titles by subject ‘suppress’ field, to hide entries from public view

The Initial Process

Once we had decided on a general table structure, an Excel spreadsheet mimicking the SQL table was created

This spreadsheet was sent to our IT contact, who imported the data into SQL

Refinements

Technical: – some columns in the SQL table needed to be

resized to accommodate longer fields

Conceptual: – Patrons did not like the suppress feature!– Proliferation of topics clutters the main page– Use of embedded HTML to allow users to access

some websites directly (passwords, free content)

And a staff-side view under development

Laura developed a second web interface for staff-only use:– Provider now a searchable field– The addition of library “right” and “restriction” agreed

to upon executing the license– Paper or electronic Interlibrary Loans Allowed?– Can title be used in eRes or course packs?

Relative ease of maintenance

Add new entries (rows):– In batch via DTS from a prepared spreadsheet– Singly, through SQL insert commands

Global editing of whole fields (e.g., all Synergy titles temporarily unavailable)

No delay in mounting changes to the Web BUT, changes all require SQL commands

The Wish List

Add ISSNs, to allow for dynamic searching via Ovid Online

Merge entries for single journals available through multiple providers in web display

Add print holdings for journals also available electronically

Ability to search multiple topics, or topic/keyword And the top wish: more staff time to devote to

developing this resource!

Resources

SQL– SQLcourse.com, http://www.sqlcourse.com

ColdFusion (soon to be ColdFusion MX)– http://www.macromedia.com/software/coldfusion/– Macromedia ColdFusion Support Center

http://www.macromedia.com/support/coldfusion/

– Macromedia ColdFusion Online Forum http://webforums.macromedia.com/coldfusion/

Conclusion

This is what we did It was harder than we thought Good luck! Questions?

– Diane at carroldi@ohsu.edu– Sara at piasecki@ohsu.edu– Laura at zeigenl@ohsu.edu