Technology

One of my interests is Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. As I read more and more books related to this topic I realized that I need to employ a more systematic approach to my self-conducted studies if I want to be thorough. To aid this process I started ten years ago to compile a list of books published in English on this topic. In the spirit of sharing knowledge I posted this list on my website in 1998. A few years later when I learned the basics of database driven websites I migrated the list to a MySQL database and created a PHP web interface for accessing it.

It was not until I took the "Organization of Information and Resources" (LIS530) class, with Professor Allyson Carlyle, in the Spring of 2007, that I realized how limited my approach was in term of library sciences. For example, my list did not comply with any standards, was not interoperable with widely-used systems, did not practice authority control, and it did not link to other, more well-established sites. The cumulative result of these boundaries is that the site had even more limited value for its visitors than I hoped for.

In order to be able to correct these mistakes I decided to take the "Catalogs, Cataloging, and Classification" (LIS531), a class developed by Professor Lisa Fusco, but conducted by Allyson. When I learned about the Library of Congress' authority control I made my Kabbalah book site compliant with it. When I became aware of WorldCat I linked each book from my site to the book's page in the WorldCat catalog. I kept learning about more and more standards that I wanted to apply to my own, home grown collection of books and tool. I am still in the process of

• making it available in MARC21 format
• creating an XML version
• creating a Dublin Core version
• connecting each book at the work level using OCLC's XISBN API (This means that all editions of a certain book is linked not just the specific one I had in my database.)

In the middle of the work I moved the site to its own domain: sefarim.net. ("Sefarim" means "books" in Hebrew.) I also kept adding new books to the site as I learned about them; they total almost 500. When available I added links to Amazon.com, GoogleBooks, and LibraryThing.com for each book. I installed GoogleAnalytics to have metrics available about site usage. I added text-based advertisements via Google's Adsense, to (possibly) generate some revenue from the site.

The two courses I mentioned inspired and enabled me to do and plan the above additions. In my last quarter I am taking the "Conceptual Database Design" (LIS542) class with Professor Robert Larson. I hope the knowledge gained there will enable me to create a more appropriate underlying database structure for my collection. To make sefarim.net professional, standard compliant, clearly designed, and in general of high value has been my longtime dream. The result of taking cataloging and database classes move me significantly to get closer to this dream. I consider the phase the site is in now to be a significant technological accomplishment. The hundreds of hours of work I put in creating a better version of the site was a considerable learning experience for me. Figuring out how to apply various standards, how to optimize databases, how to create efficient and elegant PHP interfaces were all challenges in themselves that I overcame one by one with the help of my studies.

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