Database Project




Description of Situation:

This database project is part of the curriculum for course number 508, Introduction to Information Science and Technology, for students of the University of Rhode IslandĖs Library and Information Science course.

The purpose of this project is to design a database to hold articles, to provide mechanism to search for an article by one or more keywords and to print them in the APA format. The database is intended to hold journal articles relevant to the field of information theory and information science, related technologies, library applications, and communication.

The anticipated users of this project are students in this class and students of the URI for the next five years and anybody who has access to the URI website. Anybody of interest in this subject, such as educators and students outside of the university or general public, will be able to search thru this database, if they have access to the collegeĖs website.

Description of the Database Form:

A form, by name Annotation, with online accessibility, has been designed, as specified by the APA format, to enter data into the database; the same form can be used to view and modify data. Navigation between the several annotations stored in this database is effortless thru this form. A copy of this form is shown below:




Estimated size of the database:


This database contains one table, Annotation, with the following fields.

List of fields of the table ANNOTATION


Field Description Data Type Storage Size
Annotation ID: 8 bytes automatic numbering The identification column uniquely identifies the row and prevents duplicate data from being entered in the table.
Author1 Last Name: 50 bytes text identifies the last name of the first author listed in the article
Author1 First Initials: 1 byte text identifies the first initial of the first author of the article
Author1 Middle Initials: 1 byte text identifies the middle initial of the first author of the article
Author2 Last Name: 50 bytes text identifies the last name of the second author listed in the article
Author2 First Initials: 1 byte text identifies the first initial of the second author of the article
Author2 Middle Initials: 1 byte text identifies the middle initial of the second author of the article
Author3 Last Name: 50 bytes text identifies the last name of the third author listed in the article
Author3 First Initials: 1 byte text identifies the first initial of the third author of the article
Author3 Middle Initials: 1 byte text identifies the middle initial of the third author of the article
Year Published: 4 bytes number identifies the year of the article was published
Title: 100 bytes text identifies the actual title of the journal article
Journal Name: 100 bytes text identifies the name of the journal
Volume: 4 bytes number identifies the volume number of the journal
Issue: 10 bytes text identifies the issue number of the journal within a volume.
Pages: 10 bytes text shows page numbers the article appears on - some journals have page numbers containing letters
Keyword1: 100 bytes text Identifies the access point.
Keyword2: 100 bytes text Identifies the access point.
Keyword3: 100 bytes text Identifies the access point.
Annotation Text: 500 bytes memo contains the 50 word-abstract of the article


There are 10 annotations required per student per class with a maximum of 25 students in each class, 5 classes per year for 5 years, this adds up to be a maximum of 6,250 annotations altogether. If you multiply 6,250 records by 1192 bytes (the total of the maximum bytes per record) you get a little over 7,450,000 bytes, or 8-10 MB required for the entire database.

Maximum size of each record = 1192 bytes
Maximum records in 5 years = 6250
Maximum size of the file in 5 years = 1192 x 6250 = 7,450,000 bytes or 7.45 MB

Capability of computer:

The average personal computer today contains a 60 GB hard drive with 256 MB of RAM. The database, even at maximum capacity at the end of the 5 years, should have no trouble fitting onto a personal computer built in 2005.

Software Used:

MS-Access has been chosen to design this database as Access has lot of inbuilt capabilities which makes not only the designing of forms and reports easier, but also makes it easier for the end-user to navigate thru these forms and reports. A personal computer is sufficient enough to store and access this database.

Project Output:

This project uses the printing options provided by MS-Access. Queries have been designed to search annotations by keywords or by authorĖs last name or by the title of the journal and results (matching records) from these queries will be displayed in the APA format, which can then be sent to the printer.

Security for the system:

Groups with different levels of security can be added to the database using AccessĖs inbuilt security measure and users can be added to the appropriate groups to provide them with different levels of accessibility and authority. Thus, an admin group with superior levels of access can be defined and the owner of the database can be added under this group; the other students of the class and the URI can be added under a group which has read-only permissions. The database can then be backed up onto a disk at periodic intervals to minimize the loss of data. In case of loss of data, the database can be recovered from the most recent backup. MS-Access provides easily understandable and adaptable tools for such utilities.


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