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Database Descriptions

If you go to any subject page you will notice that to the right of the database title there is a small blue “i” icon. If you click on the icon, a window pops up that gives you more information about that particular database. We suspect that very few people actually use this valuable resource. We are proposing the following 3 items as a way to make the database description information more readily accessible:

  1. When you perform a search for a database (see the “Finding Databases” post), you would not only search by title, but you would also search through database descriptions. That way, if you are searching for a database about business but business was not in the title, it would hopefully show up in the search results because business was mentioned in the description.
  2. Remove the blue “i” icon and replace it with something similar to what Netflix has. In Netflix, if you hover over a movie title a non-obtrusive pop-up gives you more information about that movie. We would like to have the same thing for our databases so that when you hover over the database title, a pop-up will give you more details about the database. We could include the database description, where the database is available (on/off campus) and provide links to a tutorial about how to use the database and the terms of use for the database.
  3. Finally, to make sure the database descriptions are kept up-to-date, we have provided a way for subject librarians to easily update the descriptions of the databases for which they have responsibility.

Numbers 1 and 3 have already been implemented. We would like to implement #2 during January so please send us your comments and suggestions by January 19th so that we can use them as we move forward with this project.