CLSC555 Information Systems Webliography: Online Database Industry
By
Melissa Oliver

 

|Database Industry Marketplace |Online Database Usability |Online Database Features and Usage|

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• Database Industry Marketplace
  
  
  • The Information Playground
    by Carol Tenopir, Gayle Baker, and William Robinson
    This article from Library Journal is a comprehensive overview of the online database industry in 2004
    geared to librarians, including a hyperlink to company profiles of seventy-two online database vendors
    and a comparison table of forty-one firms with details about their database services. Strengths: It is
    easy for a novice to glean information about the current marketplace and the article offers good
    summaries in bulleted list format of industry "trends to watch” and the ”typical” 2003 database vendor.
    Weakness: The source of the article is a voluntary survey completed by database vendors.
    
    
  • The Art of Conjuring E-content
    by Carol Tenopir, Gayle Baker, and William Robinson
    This article from Library Journal is a comprehensive overview of the online database industry in 2003
    geared to librarians, including profiles of fifty-nine online database vendors with hyperlinks and a
    comparison table of thirty-one firms with details about their database services. Strengths: It is easy
    for a novice to glean information about the current marketplace and the article offers good summaries
    in bulleted list format of the “typical “ 2003 online database and the ”typical” 2002 database vendor.
    Weakness: The source of the article is a voluntary survey completed by database vendors.
    
    
  • The Database Universe
    by Carol Tenopir, Gayle Baker and William Robinson
    This article from Library Journal is a comprehensive overview of the online database industry in 2002
    geared to librarians, including a table of thirty-two firms and their database products and a
    comparison table of thirty-three firms with details about their database services. Strengths: Information provided is a good overview of the marketplace. Weakness: The table of firms and database products is situated in a column that is the length of the article which makes it difficult to read the table and distracts the reader's attention from the narrative.
    
    
  • Database Marketplace 2001: Racing at Full Speed Content
    by Carol Tenopir, Gayle Baker, and William Robinson
    This article from Library Journal is a comprehensive overview of the online database industry in 2001 geared to librarians, including profiles of fifty-one online database vendors with hyperlinks and a narrative on the highlights on industry activities in 2001. Strength: It is easy for a novice to glean information about the current marketplace. Weakness: The article states “Some 70 products are featured in our charts and graphs…”, yet no charts or graphs are included in the online version of this article.
    
    
  • Online Database: Reflections on Two Decades
    by Carol Tenopir
    This article from LibraryJournal.com is a retrospective on the author’s twenty years of work analyzing the online database industry. Tenopir discusses changes from 1983 through 2003 with sections on software redesign, mergers and acquisitions, full-text searching, e-journals, linking and pricing issues. Strength: Tenopir is a recognized expert in online databases. Weakness: Only two sentences are dedicated to a forecast for the next decade of online databases.
    
    
  • Online Databases-Information available electronically
    by Stephen W. Hartman, Anique Qureshi, and Joel G. Siegel
    This article from CPA Journal Online is geared toward information seekers outside of the library industry. The authors give an overview of the online database industry, including usage statistics, a variety of commercial and government databases available online, on CD-ROM and through the Web. Strength: It is easily understood by any who has used a computer to search for information. Weakness: The text could be presented in a more easy to read and inviting format.
    
    
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• Online Database Usability
  
  
  • ERIC's Extreme Makeover
    by Carol Tenopir
    This article from Library Journal discusses recent changes to ERIC, the Education Resources Information Center, one of the first online databases and the largest education database. Changes prompted by the Education Sciences Reform Act of 2002 include more full text access and a new search system. Weakness: The article is brief; more detail about the changes to ERIC would be beneficial. Strength: A hyperlink is provided to a comprehensive resource on ERIC.
    
    
  • Disappearing Databases
    by Carol Tenopir
    A discussion of the “disappearance” of online content—why it happens and who it affects, with specific database examples. Strength: The article touches on a variety of issues related to disappearances. Weakness: Hyperlinks to database websites are provided in a table at the end of the article but not incorporated into the text of the article.
    
    
  • Online Databases--Sorting Through Online Systems
    by Carol Tenopir
    This article from LibraryJournal.com is oriented toward the casual user of online databases and points out the similarities among systems, including interface design, search features and database structure. Strength: The article is understandable to the casual user of online databases. Weakness: The last section about the citation of scholarly resources is unrelated to the article title “Sorting Through Online Systems” and could be omitted.
    
    
  • Digital Libraries- Cross-Database Search: One-Stop Shopping
    by Roy Tennant
    This article is geared toward librarians concerned with usability when end users search online databases. A discussion of several technological advanced search mechanisms that seemingly allow for a “one stop shopping” experience that searches across multiple systems. Strength: The author presents several examples of commercial cross-search services. Weakness: Some examples of services are given only a few lines of consideration while others are given paragraphs.
    
    
  • Duplication Is Ubiquitous--Online Databases
    by Carol Tenopir
    A discussion of the online duplication of journal articles and the availability of metasearch engines and link resolvers to alert the user to duplications among search results. Includes a section on the recent discovery of duplicate articles published in different journals. Strength: Currency—the article was just published three weeks ago. (4/1/2005) Weakness: The article is brief and more examples of specific journals that are duplicates would make the points more concrete to the reader.
    
    
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• Online Database Features and Usage
  
  
  • Online Databases
    by Carol Tenopir
    A discussion of past and current methods of determining “the most popular” online database systems by measuring usage and how individual libraries can track usage to determine their most popular systems. Strength: Two charts for comparing data, Systems Used by University Libraries for Intermediary Searching and Systems Used by University Libraries for End User Searching Weakness: Four hyperlinks are incorporated into the text and all four are dead links.
    
    
  • Using Online Information Resources: Reaching for the *.*'s
    by Roberta Lamb
    This paper discusses the usage of online information resources and contends that users are comprised of corporations, governments and individuals as well as scholarly researchers. This interorganizational usability is valuable when examining the future usage of online information and digital libraries. Strength: This article is an in-depth look at online information usage and provides a wealth of information. Weakness: A complex scholarly paper may be more information needed for the casual user of online information.
    
    
  • Interorganizational Relationships and Online Information Resources
    by Roberta Lamb
    This paper examines research-in-progress on the usage of online resources by organizations and the contexts for which information is sought. Strength: This is a complex and in-depth look at how sample organizations use online resources based on a study by the author. Weakness: The complexity limits the audience of the paper to readers interested in scholarly research and is over the head of the casual reader.
    
    
  • Full-Text vs. Full-Image Information Formats: Choosing the Right Tools for the Job
    by Dennis Crane
    This paper addresses the challenge of the information seeker to not only identify what sources to use for research, but to first identify what type of information is sought including citations, abstracts, full-text and images. Strength: This article is geared to information seekers not limited to the library arena. It also contains charts to compare information presented easily. Weakness: The text could be presented in a more easy to read format, and some of the characters are translated into non-English symbols when using both Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers.
    
    
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©Melissa Oliver 2005