Creating an Electronic Database Selection Expert System.

TLDR: This presentation will describe the creation and initial testing of an online, prototype, end-user database selection tool developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and detail the environment, issues, and concerns that gave rise to it.

Abstract: The past decade has seen an explosion in the numbers and types of electronic information resources available to identify and retrieve articles and other information relevant to a scholar's research needs. Today library users are confronted with a myriad of online and CD-ROM bibliographic and full-text databases from which they are expected to select the one or ones most germane to their information needs. The task for the academic library is to facilitate the selection process. That many users are now accessing Library-provided menus and database lists from outside the Library and at hours when no library staff member is available to assist, makes the challenge that much more difficult. This presentation will describe the creation and initial testing of an online, prototype, end-user database selection tool developed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). We will detail the environment, issues, and concerns that gave rise to our project, it's relation to other work, and the approach we took and why. The prototype Web-based selection interface developed allows users to search for relevant databases by keywords and phrases taken directly from their search topics, by browsing librarian-assigned subject categories, and/or by identifying desired database characteristics. Behind this interface is an SQL database containing in-depth information about the characteristics of each database, including it's complete controlled vocabulary (when available) or an extensive sampling of controlled vocabulary terms (or equivalent information) drawn from actual records.