The Studies in Bibliography Full-Text Database

In 1997, the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia will issue its fiftieth volume of Studies in Bibliography, a landmark in its history of continued scholarly excellence and diversity. The Society plans to mark this anniversary by publishing the first release of its Full-Text Database, an Internet-accessible, fully SGML marked-up, machinereadable database that will, when completed, contain the entire back catalogue of SB.

The SB Full-Text Database is essentially an in-house operation that receives very little outside funding, relying instead upon a collaboration of resources among the Society, the University's Library, Electronic Text Center and Department of English, and the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities. Because of the modest budget afforded the Database its participants have developed a number of procedures, practices and strategies for maximizing resources. Labor and equipment costs, two major elements with which all projects must deal, have been shared among the parties to take advantage of the rhythms inherent in the academic calendar. The project has developed techniques for text conversion that minimize the error-checking labors posed by the use of low-cost scanning equipment. It has also combined the strengths of various text processing tools such as UNIX utilities and the Oxford Concordance Program to increase efficiency of mark-up chores. When coordinated by a long-term administrative plan, these individual elements allow the project to create a high-quality database with a minimum budget.

The speaker will outline the basic operating system of the SB Database Project, provide examples of the TEI SGML mark-up scheme developed for the texts, discuss text conversion, markup and delivery procedures, and demonstrate the project's operation using Open Text's Pat search and display software, Internet Web browsers, and product access limitation components.