Overview
This semester I am enrolled in Introduction to Data Information through the Library and Information Sciences Department at UW-Madison. For our final "case study" assignemnt, we are to design a simple (albeit multi-tabled) database about a chosen topic, and then create a basic website to present the data we gathered and analysis about it.
Personal Library
For this project, I have chosen to catalog my personal library. Since April 2010, I have been working on-desk first at Middleton, but then at Madison Public Library in the circulation department. I am passionate about library work and cataloging and thought it would be fun to try to catalog my personal library. When I first started thinking about how I would design my database, I thought I could simply have a table for my books which would then join to a table of authors and a table of publishers. However, I realized I needed to make my database a bit more complex when considering that not only can a sole author write multiple books, but a book can have multiple authors. I also wanted to include data for editors, translators, and artists. I renamed my `author` table `people` and added an enumerated text field to define the person's role in relation to the book. I also had to add a junction table so that I could link multiple people to multiple books. In the junction table I included a field to designate the order in which the people of a given category should be listed (author order is especially important in the academic world).
On this website you can view a more detailed explanation of my database design with an entity relationship diagram, and see the SQL query that is used on the Library Search page, which displays the data stored in my database. Finally, I have added a page that cites specific resources I used and the sorce of code snippets I adapted while working on this project.