Mark has let me hijack our administrator account while he is off on his travels, so this is a perfect opportunity to announce that delegates at the SHARP conference will next week be given the chance, for the duration of the conference, to trial the database using our latest testbed interface. We’d also welcome comments here in response to this message. So if testers could let us know what you think, what could be clearer and what functionality you wish we could add, we’ll do our best to oblige. And for those readers not coming to Washington, hopefully the comments will whet your appetite in advance of publication.
Could users please note that the database is still in its testing and checking phase, that statistics are therefore open to minor amendment and that for the moment this remains unpublished research. Please therefore do not publish any data from the database without permission. It will all become available in due course (though for reasons beyond our control probably not now until Spring 2012). So happy browsing and querying to all our fellow SHARP delegates and let us know what you think. Can’t wait to see you all in DC. Best wishes, Simon Burrows
Thanks for all your work on this great project. You could make your database even more valuable be making it available using tools that provide more flexible querying and analysis. For example, I was hoping to look at statistics on volumes per title, volume dimensions (folio, quarto, etc) and volume page counts. These data appear to be in your database, but you don’t provide a way to query them.
Building a powerful query engine and visualization tools is difficult and expense. You might consider using a generally available tool. A very impressive new data tool is Needle. See
http://needlebase.com
A tool that maps more directly to your current, table-based architecture is Google Fusion Tables. See
http://www.google.com/fusiontables/public/tour/index.html
These data tools and others like them are rapidly improving. It seems to me to make sense for you to focus on the data and book-industry specific knowledge. You can ride the development of general-purpose data tools for data sharing, querying, and visualizations.
I’ve also found it extremely helpful having a look at your excellent project. I’ve been particularly impressed by the map and chart visualisations. I can see these being very useful in the future for both teaching and research purposes, and am now thinking about ways in which I can incorporate similar things into projects of my own. Thanks for all the work you’ve done!