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Developing a database to maintain my library's links made everyone's lives easier and provided users with a valuable resource.
You want me to add how many links?" "Why doesn't the description for Google on this page match the description we have on the other pages?"
These were questions that my Research Links Team frequently heard me asking. My role as Web manager at Jenkins Law Library in Philadelphia put me in charge of all additions and changes to the library Web site (http://www.jenkinslaw.org), which included daily edits to the Research Links pages. Jenkins is no different from other libraries; we too are providing more information via the Internet to keep up with the demands of our patrons. In my opinion, our Research Links are the biggest asset of our site. all legal (http://legallinks.jenkinslaw.org) and nonlegal (http://nonlegallinks.jenkinslaw.org) links are reviewed by librarians before they are approved for inclusion, to ensure that the information we are providing to our patrons is accurate, current, objective, and of good quality.
Jenkins is the oldest law library in America, and it has a reputation for offering great content not only to local attorneys, but also to the entire legal research community. We had a lot of great links-more than 250 pages with 1,500-plus links-but they were all coded in straight HTML, which meant that only I could make the necessary edits. It also meant that, with so much data, things were inconsistent from page to page. In june of 2004 I decided that I had had enough; it was time for a change.
Pay No Attention to the Woman Behind the Curtain
My main goal was to automate the process by which research links were added so pages could be generated dynamically and so I wouldn't have to always do daily updates. However, it was very important to me that I do this without changing the way the users interacted with the site. As in The Wizard ofOz, I didn't want anyone to know there was someone "behind the curtain" manipulating things.
I decided to start by reviewing some free, prepackaged link modules and quickly realized that there was nothing already written that would allow us to keep our Research Links organized the way they were. My long-term goal...