Description
This database is composed of class annotations for LSC 508: Introduction to Information Science and Technology. It will be comprised of all of the annotations written by each student in LSC508 in the fall, spring, and summer semesters over a period of five years. Its purpose is to be utilized by current and future LSC 508 students as a means for preliminary research on topics for various papers or projects they may be doing for LSC 508 (e.g., to research various information theories for their group Information Theory Project). The database of annotations can serve as a jumping-off point for course-relevant topics that may aid them in further research.The database will be maintained and managed by a student volunteer (who will be a current LSC 508 student)or a teaching assistant who has taken LSC 508 in the past. Access to the database will be granted only to the individual responsible for managing the database, the professor in charge of the course, and the current students enrolled in the course. The database will uploaded to the school network server and be password-protected, with the password changing each semester.
Input Requirements and Data Definitions
In its original form, each annotation was composed using an APA-style citation format followed by a 50-word description of the article, similar to the following example:
|
Annotation #1: Gendreau, R. (2007). The new techno culture in the workplace and at home. Journal of American Academy of Business, Cambridge, 11(2), 191-196. Explores the rise of technology in American society and the resulting changes in daily work and home life. Discusses various societal complications created by technology and coping strategies for dealing with rapid change and advancement. |
When the annotations are entered into the database, they will retain much of their original formatting (see "Screen Design" below). Each annotation record entered into the database will contain the following information:
| Field Data | Length | A/N | Description |
| Author name | 50 | a | Names of all article authors |
| Publication Date | 4 | n | Date article was published |
| Article Title | 50 | a | |
| Journal Title | 50 | a | |
| Volume Number | 2 | n | |
| Issue Number | 2 | n | |
| Description | 300 | a | 50-word annotation of article |
Screen Design
The screen layout used for entering data for each record into the database will look as follows:This design will allow information to be entered into the file in the same order and layout in which it appears on the screen, and will maintain the APA-style format used in the original input form.
Scope and Size
After five years, the database is expected to contain approximately 8750 student annotations. This assumes roughly 25 students are taking each of the two LSC 508 sections each semester and 25 students will be enrolled in one summer section. Each student will be writing approximately 15 annotations each in the fall and spring and about 10 annotations each in the summer session.
Each record in the file will have a maximum expected size of approximately 460 bytes. After five years, the expected size of the entire database is estimated to be 4 MB. A program of this size can be run on any standard operating system capable of loading FileMaker Pro.
Software and Hardware
The database program will be constructed using FileMaker Pro version 9 on a standard PC with a minimum of 100GB hard drive space and 512 MB of RAM. This should provide more than enough space to house the database at the end of the five-year annotation accumulation period.
Usability
FileMaker Pro is an excellent program for this database, because it allows for "find requests" in any field of a record. Students will be able to use the database to search by subject or title keywords and also by specific author names or article and journal titles if they so choose. This will allow them to find relevant articles dealing with the topic of their interest. If they are researching a paper, they would also be able to use the journal titles and author names returned by keyword searches to further their research. The program also accepts relaxed, truncated, or exact search terms, so students may search as broadly or as narrowly as they wish. Searches may also be printed in the screen layout format.