Projekt Dyabola (the Dyabola project) is a software for creating and browsing bibliographic data and image collections, specifically targeted to the humanities community. The program is built and maintained by the Biering & Brinkmann company of Germany, and access to a web version is available through subscription. The service is available in six languages.

Databases

Currently, 15 databases are available in the online system, where the set of data contained in a database is delineated based on what organization owns the original collection being indexed. Each database contains individual records that describe published books and articles, authors, ancient objects, images, etc. The descriptive records, or metadata, are connected in various ways, such as by connecting authors with their publications, and publications with their subject descriptors. In this way, it functions similar to many integrated library systems, or

citation indexing A citation index is a kind of bibliographic index, an index of citations between publications, allowing the user to easily establish which later documents cite which earlier documents. A form of citation index is first found in 12th-century Hebre ...

services.

Example: subject catalog of the German Archaeological Institute in Rome

This database, called the Realkatalog in German, contains an index of all the academic publications owned by the German Archaeological Institute in Rome. These publications generally cover topics about

Classical Studies Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

, i.e. the history and archaeology of the region around the Mediterranean Sea from about 800 BCE to 476 CE. The data entry for this collection began in 1990, and currently all publications from 1956 to February 2009 have been indexed. This includes about half a million titles of books and articles, one hundred thousand authors, and one million subject words describing these. To find a record, a keyword search either across all metadata fields or restricted to one field can be performed. It is also possible to browse the hierarchical tree of subject terms to find a particular term of interest. Finally, if a user knows the local unique identifier for a source, this can be entered directly. Search results are automatically saved for future browsing. A record about an article would contain the title, publication date, and page numbers, as well as a link to the author, the journal, any reviews of the work, and a list of subject headings. From a particular journal issue, it is possible to navigate to each of the individual articles and vice versa. The system lacks a number of important pieces of information that would allow the user to make a relevancy judgment on the source. For example, aside from the title and a few subject headings, no information is provided about the actual content of the source. Book summaries and article abstracts are not included.

Maintenance and access issues

Currently, the large amount of data that has been manually entered and interconnected represents a value-added aspect of this software. However, the requirement for manual resources restricts access to the service to those that can purchase a subscription. New models have become available over the last few years to remedy these issues. Full-text searching and automated citation interconnection, such as that begun in the Google Books and Google Scholar projects will likely eventually make this type of manually maintained database obsolete. In addition, free online citation indexing programs such as

Citeulike CiteULike was a web service which allowed users to save and share citations to academic papers. Based on the principle of social bookmarking, the site worked to promote and to develop the sharing of scientific references amongst researchers. In ...

and

Connotea Connotea was a free online reference management service for scientists, researchers, and clinicians, created in December 2004 by Nature Publishing Group and discontinued in March 2013. It was one of a breed of social bookmarking tools, similar t ...

allow the global community to collaboratively index and catalog academic sources, using a model not unlike Wikipedia.

User interface issues

Since Projekt Dyabola's interface is about 10 years old, a number of weaknesses are now becoming apparent, especially when compared to similar, more modern systems. The interface is unintuitive and relies on outdated technologies and paradigms of interaction. For example, once the database is opened in a separate browser

pop-up window Pop-up ads or pop-ups are forms of online advertising on the World Wide Web. A pop-up is a graphical user interface (GUI) display area, usually a small window, that suddenly appears ("pops up") in the foreground of the visual interface. The pop-u ...

, there is no description to indicate the contents of the dataset being searched. These screens also lack

contextual help Context-sensitive help is a kind of online help that is obtained from a specific point in the state of the software, providing help for the situation that is associated with that state.US patent 5285709 Context-sensitive help, as opposed to genera ...

that would aid the user in understanding the available functionality. Another issue is that there are points where a user may like to return to a previous screen, but this option is not made available and the browser's back button is purposely disabled. In addition, the software automatically saves previous searches and makes these available on the main search page, but it does not provide a function for the user to delete these old searches as they begin to clutter up this screen. Finally, when viewing an individual record, a user can also view its subject terms, which are in a

hierarchical tree A hierarchy (from Greek: , from , 'president of sacred rites') is an arrangement of items (objects, names, values, categories, etc.) that are represented as being "above", "below", or "at the same level as" one another. Hierarchy is an important ...

structure, but it is not possible to directly navigate this tree. These examples provide only a brief sample of the

usability Usability can be described as the capacity of a system to provide a condition for its users to perform the tasks safely, effectively, and efficiently while enjoying the experience. In software engineering, usability is the degree to which a soft ...

issues of the software. The weaknesses of the system can be fully enumerated in comparison with a newer software packages that serves a similar function. An example would be the

Endeca Endeca was a software company headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that sold eCommerce search, customer experience management, enterprise search and business intelligence applications. Endeca was founded in 1999 as Optigrab and was a privat ...

faceted-browsing system, as implemented for th
library catalog
of the

Triangle Research Libraries Network A triangle is a polygon with three edges and three vertices. It is one of the basic shapes in geometry. A triangle with vertices ''A'', ''B'', and ''C'' is denoted \triangle ABC. In Euclidean geometry, any three points, when non- collinea ...

(TRLN) in North Carolina.

References

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External links