ATG “I wonder” Wednesday: Do you think that the concept of an electronic “database” is well-defined?

2 Responses to ATG “I wonder” Wednesday: Do you think that the concept of an electronic “database” is well-defined?

1. Matthew Thomas says:

   September 14, 2012 at 9:44 am

   
   

   Great question and my answer is “Absolutely not.” We tend to use it for pretty much anything electronic/online, with info in it, is searchable, and is something we’d put in our collection. Besides the fuzziness of some of those criteria, it gets a little vague when we’re dealing with size: if it’s big then probably, but if it’s small then it might be an ebook or reference site or something like that. Then there are other things that some people include and some don’t: data/statistics packages, full text journal collections, ebook collections, etc. It’s just used as a catch-all but the damage is be done when (1) we use it for our patrons who have no clue (or a different clue) as to what we mean and (2) it stops us from thinking about these resources in more meaningful ways.

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2. Katina Strauch says:

   October 19, 2012 at 4:15 pm

   
   

   What can we do to clarify this. I should know this but is some organization like NISO working on this?

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