Students in LSC 508, Introduction to Information Science and Technology, are required every semester to annotate between 10 and 15 scholarly journal articles. These annotations are posted on the students' web pages which are designed for the class, and can be viewed by other students until the end of each semester. A database would be a convenient tool to store, organize and sort the annotations for later use. Students could look to the database for journal articles on course topics or use it later to search for material for a research project. Additionally it would be a simple way for the professor to store the large number of annotations he receives yearly, and have the ability to compare studentsí work which would assist with grading. Searching by year would be a helpful way to examine how the approach to specific topics has changed over time. The original form used prior to the database was an APA style citation and an annotation of 50 words or less. Included on the form was the number of the annotation, the studentís name, date, and course number. LSC 508 has two sections in the fall and spring and one section in the summer with a maximum of 25 students per class. In the fall and spring students are required to annotate 15 articles, and in the shorter summer session they are required to annotate 10.

The fields that I selected closely follow the APA style of the original form. The APA style requires that up to 6 authors per citation be used but I reduced the number to 3 since most articles that were annotated had that number or less. I added the field of Topic because I thought that this would be a very useful way for to search for additional information. Below are the field data input requirements.

Field Names and Input Requirements

Field Name	Length	A/N
Number	7	N
Primary Author	20	A
Primary Author Initial(s)	6	A
Second Author	20	A
Second Author Initial(s)	6	A
Third Author	20	A
Third Author Initials	6	A
Year	6	N
Article Title	200	A
Journal	75	A
Volume	6	N
Issue	6	N
Page(s)	11	N
Annotation	350	A
Topic	70	A
Student	20	A
Total	829

Estimated Size of Database

Maximum Record Size	829
Maximum Number of Annotations in Five Years	8750
Total Number of Bytes	7,253,750 (7.25 MB)

The form I created includes the same information as the original form with the addition of topic and number. On the original form students list the number of their annotation such a 1 of 10. On the new form each entry will be assigned a unique number in ascending order. This will help keep track of how many annotations are in the database. Below is the screen layout for entering data into the database.



I selected the Microsoft Works Suite 2004 database program for this project because it was included with the purchase of my computer. Although it does not have the features of Access it was more than adequate for the assignment and was relatively easy to use. The system requirements are: Computer Multimedia PC with Pentium 300-MHz or faster processor (500 MHz recommended) and Microsoft WindowsÆ 98, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 2000 Professional, or Windows XP operating system Memory 64 MB of RAM (128 MB of RAM recommended) Hard disk 1,050 MB of available hard-disk space for typical installation The database I created requires 7.25 MB. The Dell computer I use has a capacity of 80 GB, 256 MB of RAM and a processor speed of 2.5 Ghz, and will easily be able to handle the database at full capacity. To prevent unauthorized use and access to the database it would be accessed through a Read Only restriction.

I used the database to generate reports by Journal and Topic since I thought that these would be the most useful ways for a student searching for information. I found printing the reports on multiple pieces of paper to be more difficult than I expected and was only able to print 256 characters in the list view. This truncated each annotation and I was not completely pleased with the results.




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