A Workshop organised by The Biotechnology Information Strategic Forum, with support from DGXII of the Commission of the European Communities, and held at CAB International, Wallingford, Oxon, UK, October 1996
Secondary databases: the continuing link -- Peter Scott and Shaun Hobbs
Linking is the essence of the new publishing world. The "target item" in scientific publishing is the factual and primary data. Increasingly, these will be stored "at source", or in databases which collect and collate a great deal of similar or publisher specific material.
There is a clear danger, as outlined before, that these moves will add to the problems of locating the correct piece of information. Secondary services currently add value to the primary collections by offering:
* Consolidation
* Summarisation
* Standardisation
* Classification and indexing
* Commentary and value judgement.
They therefore allow the user to scan a vast number of articles locating those of potential interest. Increasingly, new technologies will offer even more opportunities for secondary databases as they will be further integrated with primary text, with factual data and, if well indexed, will offer the chance for real data mining and so allow information to be better used (i.e. to locate facts, trends, relationships etc.).
Secondary databases will have to evolve however. There is an immediate need for them to cover electronically published material. As web crawlers and robotic searching strategies/software become available they will have to ensure that they offer intrinsic value. Some experts wonder whether automatic indexing will do away with the secondary file but the abstract - by definition - is the central focus of a story and automatic indexing, even of the primary article, will still need to generate a manageable product. Until now, the abstract has proven to be the best suited tool allowing the hard data as well as the "quintessence" of the target document to be recorded.
Thus the secondary database will sit in the centre of the information stage:
