M OVING FROM A PHP F LAT - F ILE E LECTRONIC R ESOURCES M ANAGER TO D RUPAL 6 V IEWS Junior Tidal New York City College of Technology, CUNY code4lib NE, Yale University October 26, 2012

T HE C HALLENGE OF E LECTRONIC R ESOURCE M ANAGEMENT (ERM) E-resources can be a hassle to manage Lack of back-end accessibility to the library website Lack of a collaborative environment Software and security challenges: lack of MySQL, shell access, and file permissions.

H OW DID WE WORK AROUND THESE CHALLENGES ? Solution required an easier way to manage ERM. The solution also required compatibility for the server’s configuration. FTP access for files (through Dreamweaver) PHP 3 compatible Solution could compensate for security lockdown

W HAT IS A FLAT - FILE DATABASE ? A flat-file database is a tabular database that uses plain text file as storage. The flat-file consists of a single entry with keys and attributes on each new line within the file, separated by a delimiter. There are no built-in relationships between records.

E XAMPLE OF A F LAT -F ILE E NTRY Academic Search Complete (EBSCO)| y.cuny.edu:2048/login?url=http ://search.ebscohost.com/login. aspx?authtype=ip,uid&profile=e host&defaultdb=a9h| ary.citytech.cuny.edu/research /annotations/index.php#ASP|The largest scholarly, multidisciplinary, full-text database.|

PHP I MPLEMENTATION The server script consisted for a PHP file that would retrieve results from the flat-file. The flat-file contents would be rendered in HTML and displayed to the end user. The flat-file was accessible to a number of librarian.

PHP S CRIPT FOR F LAT -F ILE D ATABASE L OADING

M IGRATING TO D RUPAL 6 Library was able to get their own server. This opened up many possibilities including a new OS (Linux), software, statistics recording and experimentation. We were now able to utilize the Drupal 6 content management system

D RUPAL V IEWS After migrating the website content to Drupal, we still needed a way for ERM. Using work based on Leo Klein, we were able to use Drupal to manage our eResources We used the built-in Taxonomy module and the following custom modules: Content Construction Kit (CCK) Views

D RUPAL V IEWS AND E R ESOURCES eResources are stored as a custom content type in Drupal The Taxonomy module is used to assign type and subject to each eResource Editable attributes of eResources such as the name, URL, and description, are pulled based on selecting a subject These resources are displayed to the user

A DVANTAGES OF U SING V IEWS Smoother workflow, less work Collaborative environment Single versions of the database Subject specific eResources are stored in a single database Content is stored in a MySQL database which is easier for migration and backups Maintenance is done through Drupal

D ISADVANTAGES OF V IEWS Learning curve of Views Lack of date control through Views eResources are dependent on Views and subsequent updates and maintenance FFDB doesn’t require as much as Views FFDB can be more flexible than Views

C ONCLUSION Challenge of ERM management Flat-file databases can be used to overcome restrictive server environments They offer few advantages in comparison to Drupal Views Views provides a more collaborative and smoother workflow

Questions?

Thanks! Junior Tidal New York City College of Technology,