EMBASE in the nineties: new methods of database production and exploitation
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb045242 |
| Pages | 253-258 |
| Date | 01 April 1993 |
| Published date | 01 April 1993 |
| Author | Annette Herholdt |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
Article
EMBASE in the nineties:
new methods of database
production and exploitation
Annette Herholdt
Elsevier
Science Publishers
bv,
Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
Abstract: Developing and maintaining a competitive
edge in the information business today will periodically
require the timely and smooth transition from older to
state-of-the-art technology. Central to the production of a
commercially-available database in the biomedical field is
the speed
with
which it can be created and
updated,
particularly for access on
the
major
hosts.
It is therefore
imperative that new production processes contribute
positively to timely
updating,
and that the cost
of
implementing them is offset by new opportunities for
enhancements and additional commercial exploitation of
the database. The paper describes new production methods
for the EMBASE database and
the
related issues associated
with the implementation of these changes,
in
particular the
way in which they affect data entry, indexing methods,
quality and nature of
indexing,
and
the
currency of the
database. New production methods have brought about the
possibility of new products, such as a document delivery
service, and
these
will also be
discussed.
1.
Introduction
Overall, the online business is an extremely competitive one
and to be a major player in the game, a company must be
either a vendor or a database producer. This paper has to do
primarily with database production, which is a high-cost en-
terprise with a slow return on investment. It can take several
years and a considerable financial commitment before a data-
base is profitable and then the challenge facing the producer
is,
of course, to remain in profit. In order to survive in the
highly competitive world of biomedical databases today,
where
alas,
many good products disappear without a
trace,
the
database producer must concentrate on three important as-
pects:
thorough coverage of the selected subject area within
the stated aims of the database; currency; and innovative use
of the data
itself.
The latter two concepts form the final focus
of
this
paper. The concept 'value-added' is fast becoming the
feature which distinguishes the major (viable) players from
the minor
ones.
Cost-effective production methods are essen-
tial to achieve these goals.
This paper will attempt to look at the ways in which, as an
illustration of
the
above conditions, the Excerpta Medica da-
tabase, EMBASE, has been produced over the years, and
some of
its
plans for the future.
To look forward it is often necessary to look back, and the
paper will briefly describe how the online information re-
trieval business arrived at the point where it is today. It will
then look more closely at database production methods for
EMBASE since the
sixties,
compared with systems which are
currently under consideration. Implications of these for
timely updating and new product and service development
will then be discussed.
2.
How it all started
2.
1. The hosts
The online business as we know it today is now well over two
decades old — in fact, without bending the truth even
slightly, one could say that it
is
not far off its thirtieth birthday;
young in terms of many other industries, but nevertheless
starting to show signs of maturity. After swift growth in the
late seventies and early eighties, we are seeing the number of
major players being reduced in the nineties by
means
of merg-
ers and takeovers, the most recent being the takeover of Data-
Star by Dialog, preceded by Dialog's own purchase by
Knight-Ridder.
Of course, the business didn't develop overnight but came
about as a logical outcome of many technological develop-
ments in hardware, software and telecommunications tech-
nologies over the preceding decade and a half — the fifties
and the early sixties.
Several things had to happen before it became even possi-
ble to think about an 'online industry'
per
se. For instance, it
had to be possible to transmit digital information over data
transmission (mostly telephone) lines; computers had to be
able to allow real-time access by more than one user
at a
time;
they had to have very large, by the standards of the day, inter-
nal storage capacities; and, of
course,
higher-level (English-
like) programming languages had to be developed in order to
carry out searches on data stored in these machines.
After the initial experimental ELLHILL system, which
was started in
1968
in collaboration with
the
SDC primarily in
The Electronic Library, Vol.
11,
No. 4/5, August/October 1993 253
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