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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.