STHC-L: The Science, Technology and Health Care Archives Forum

about the CBI oral histories database

• Date: Thu, 15 Nov 2001 11:43:51 -0600
• To: sthc-l@library.ucla.edu
• From: Elisabeth Kaplan <kapla024@tc.umn.edu>
• Subject: about the CBI oral histories database
• Message-ID: 3.0.5.32.20011115114351.034c8600@kapla024.email.umn.edu

Hello all, 

Thank you for all the comments and good suggestions about our oral
histories database - many of which I have implemented. 

A number of people have asked about how we did this, so I thought I would
respond to the list with some particulars. However, if anyone would like
more detail, please feel free to contact me off the list.  I should add
that we had considerable help from our Web administrator -- don't attempt
this alone!

The database was created with MySQL. (The SQL is Standard Query Language.)
We chose MySQL rather than MS Access or others because MySQL is Open-source
software. It was important to us to use non-proprietary software for
several reasons. It's free, there are no licensing issues, you aren't
dependent on any particular vendor, and with OSS you have access to the
source code and can modify it if you need to. 

The Web interfaces (there are two of them - one for the user, the the other
that allows our staff to enter data and retrieve download statistics
directly from the server) were created with PHP Hypertext Preprocessor. PHP
is used to create web pages on the fly.  It's a server-side scripting
language that is embedded in the HTML. We chose it because it is
non-proprietary and is compatible with many types of databases. PHP is
enclosed within special tags and embedded in the HTML document, which gives
you the ability to jump between HTML and PHP without having to rely on
heavy amounts of code to output HTML. PHP is executed on the server, so the
client can not view the PHP code. 

This was all gibberish to me until we did this project, so do not despair. 

I should also say that what really made this project possible was the
extensive work that was done by my predecessors at CBI (Bruce Bruemmer and
Kevin Corbitt). They wrote MARC records for the oral histories, created
subject headings using controlled vocabulary, made sure we had electronic
files of the transcripts, and had solved all of the permissions issues.  So
the truth is that while we were able to pull this off in a few months, the
reality is that 15 years of hard archival labor went into this project!

Again, thanks. 
Beth

***********************************************************************

Elisabeth Kaplan, Archivist

The Charles Babbage Institute
Center for the History of Information Technology
211 Elmer L. Andersen Library, University of Minnesota
222 - 21st Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55455
tel.612 625 9053  |  fax.612 625 8054   |   www.cbi.umn.edu