I am going to experiment with catalogues of medieval manuscripts. I have a digitised version of M.R.James catologue of manuscripts held in Gonville and Caius' library. This has details of condition, production date or century, lists of Authors and so on. There are currently projects to take catalogues like these and use professional software developers in the old-fahshioned and expensive way, to build large and difficult-to-maintain databases that only professional developers (rather than users) can understand. Using environments like this, you hardly need developers. A team of users and experts working together can quickly build a database that is far easier to use and far more transparent than any expensive database developed in the traditional IT-led way. | I am going to experiment with catalogues of medieval manuscripts. I have a digitised version of M.R.James catologue of manuscripts held in Gonville and Caius' library. This has details of condition, production date or century, lists of Authors and so on. There are currently projects to take catalogues like these and use professional software developers in the old-fahshioned and expensive way, to build large and difficult-to-maintain databases that only professional developers (rather than users) can understand. Using environments like this, you hardly need developers. A team of users and experts working together can quickly build a database that is far easier to use and far more transparent than any expensive database developed in the traditional IT-led way. |