The Annotations database is a relational database with rows containing records of citations of current articles about science and technology in the library. The annotated citations were documented by students at the University of Rhode Island as an assignment for the course LSC508 ñ Introduction to Information Science and Technology. The database has been created for current and future students in the Library and Information Studies program at URI.
Microsoft Access was the software chosen to create and maintain the database because, although itís a powerful program, it is easy to create and manage the objects, and has many built in features to help users construct and view information.
The systems approach was used to gather requirements and design the database. The necessary columns were determined from the citation and keywords were included to allow users to search the annotations for relevant information. The size of each column was set to allow maximum values and appropriate data types were chosen. A data type is a characteristic of a field that determines what kind of data can be stored in it. Most of the columns in the database are text fields which can store data up to 255 characters and can be composed of either text or number characters. Auto Number was the data type chosen for the primary key. It is an identification or counter column that is incremented as each row is added and is used to make each row in the table unique. A memo data type was chosen for the annotations column because of the length. Memo data types can accommodate a field of up to 65,536 bytes, but according to the software documentation, the data only takes up as much space it needs. Since each annotation must be less than 50 words, this column will actually use less than 500 bytes of space.
A table is normalized when each column describes the object, in this case a citation, and there is no duplication. The table in this database is not normalized because there are multiple authors and keywords. However, the low volume of users and small number of rows is insufficient to warrant a more complex database. There is no immediate need to link the annotations table to any other table, but it can be easily modified for future expansion.
The APA style and format was the only form used. The format of the annotation was used to design the input screen.
A new IMB ML370 server was purchased by Dr. C. Herbert Carson. It has 3.5 GHz of CPU and 4 gigabytes of memory. The CPU is powerful enough to allow multiple query requests to be processed without file swapping. File swapping occurs whent there is not enough space to allow the data to be read and written in one piece. However, the increase in CPU will not benefit the annotations database because access will only allow four users to access the database at the same time. The increase in memory will speed up the transactions. The server where the database will reside is located in the GSLIS department at URI.
LSC508 is offered three times each year and contains a maximum of twenty-five students. Each student must submit fifteen annotations and the server is expected to contain five years worth of data. It is estimated that the maximum number of rows will be less than 6,000. The database also includes forms, reports, queries, and macros in addition to the table. The size for the database and one student's work is estimated at less than 425 kilobytes. The amount of memory on the new server will be more than adequate.
MS Access has a security funcion that allows different levels of access to a database. User access can be customized to allow groups of users or individuals. Parts of a database can be protected, such as reports, queries, and forms, without establishing levels of access for users. The annotations database will be read only for students. Dr. Carson will be an administrator on the database and he will have password protected update authority. He will be maintaining the table which will involve adding new rows as students create new annotations and identifying duplicate rows. The space required for the database on the server must be monitored and adjusted to accommodate growth.
Two applications were created in Microsoft Access. An application was required to allow the administrator to update, change, delete rows in the table. An additional application allows students to search for citations by author, article, journal or keyword. Each search will be accomplished by query and produce the information in the same format as the input screen.
Forms and reports submitted to Dr. Carson for this assignment were created using MS Access.