PITTAM1, SHERRY KAY*, FRANK JOSEPH HANUS2, AND KEN FERSCHWEILER3. 1,2Department of Botany and Plant Pathology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA, 3Northwest Alliance for Computational Science and Engineering, 218 Alumni Center, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331, USA. - Plugging in: what we have learned in making scientific databases available on the World Wide Web.
Communication of research information to biological consultants,
government agency planners, conservation biologists, academic
researchers, private land owners, and the general public has become a
major goal of both the research community and granting agencies. The
internet has become the method of choice for this distribution of
scientific data. The data can be rapidly transported, displayed or
visualized with graphical content, can be made selectively available
with different levels of access to the public or to research
colleagues and can even be rendered downloadable. The data range from
systematic studies of plants and fungi, to floristic studies, to
synoptic keys. Working with academic and government researchers we
have developed Web deliverable query pages against robust
high-performance database management systems. The pages are
interactive, attractive, and easy to use by scientists and the general
public; yet, can perform complex queries involving, in some cases,
many tables of data. We will explore in this paper the results of
studies with users of disparate skill levels e.g. scientists within a
discipline and the general public, including secondary school
students. We will detail the success we have had teaching students
and faculty in the biological sciences, to build and maintain their
own sites without learning arcane programming or database languages.
We will also provide suggestions, guidelines and pitfalls to consider
in the early planning of your database design to insure ease and
efficiency of data retrieval. And finally we will discuss issues of
security and sensitivity of data that must be addressed when making
your data available to the public.
Key words: constructing biological databases, database, internet, teaching tools, web, WWW