Database Supported Clearinghouses in the Context of Digital Libraries (DBClear)

Staff: Heiko Hellweg, Bernd Hermes, Wei Shen
Project leader: Dr. Maximilian Stempfhuber
Contact: Dr. Maximilian Stempfhuber

Project description:

Scientific clearinghouses aim to provide the users with a means of orientation within the increasingly complex online information for their respective domain of science by providing intellectually maintained link collections that are ordered and grouped hierarchically.
Initial experience (for instance at the State Library of Lower Saxony and University Library of Goettingen - SUB Goettingen and at the GESIS-IZ, Bonn,  has revealed high acceptance, demonstrating their value as part of daily information procurement among users. They are by now accepted as an essential building block in specialized virtual libraries.
The DBClear project aims to develop an (initially subject-independent) database driven clearinghouse system and will exemplary implement the concrete clearinghouses for use in GESIS-IZ and in the special collections of the SUB Goettingen on this system.
For clearinghouses of this magnitude, methods and procedures for shared workflow and automation of frequently recurring procedures have to be developed in order to make consistency in development and maintenance of the large scale data collections possible.
The system will be adaptable to the needs of the respective institution not only in its appearance, but also in the kind, structure and number of systems used for categorization and description.

Project partner:

• Niedersächsische Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen 

Duration:  October 2000 - September 2002
                 July 2003 - July 2004

Funding source: DFG

Publications:

• Hellweg, Heiko; Hermes, Bernd; Stempfhuber, Maximilian; Enderle, Wilfried; Fischer, Thomas (2002): DBClear: A Generic System for Clearinghouses. pp. 131 - 139. In: Adamczak, Wolfgang; Nase, Annemarie (eds.): Gaining Insight from Research Information: Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Current Research Information Systems, University of Kassel, August 29-31, 2002. Kassel: Kassel University Press.
  URL: http://www.uni-kassel.de/CRIS2002/programme_abstract.ghk?id=78
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