Museum databases, help systems and end users

Abstract

This paper argues that the constructors of computerized databases have tended either to ignore the needs of potential end-users, or postponed consideration of such needs until such a late stage that the design of the database cannot be altered to accommodate them. This is because frequently they have much narrower aims and a more restricted audience in view. I define end-users as those users, actual or potential, who are not members of the museum department to whom the data belong—everyone, that is, from staff in other departments to those in other museums, as well as members of the general public. Such diversity in set-up and ‘udience’ has decided implications for the way in which the data are presented to the user—the user interface¹—and the way in which they are stored and manipulated (the database and its associated language). The whole question is pressing because end-users, driven perhaps by the sophistication of micro software, are now demanding more of managers and system developers: in the uncharitable view of some, they now know just enough to be dangerous.²

Beginning with a brief discussion of the problems encountered in designing user interfaces for On-Line Public Access Catalogs, and the object lessons to be learned from these, this paper suggests that museum databases can be designed to meet the needs both of curators and the general public; and, by examining the problems commonly encountered by naive end-users with publicly available databases, demonstrates that it is the design of the user interface—that is, the simple or complex software between the user and the database itself—that is crucial for the success of increasingly complex projects. The paper concludes with an overview of the potential help that videodisks and CD-ROMS can offer in this matter.