2024 is Coming to an End – A Look Back and Our Thanks

Brigitte Doß | December 13, 2024

As the year draws to a close, the DBIS team reflects on an eventful 2024 filled with challenges and significant progress. We would like to take this opportunity to look back on the past months and express our heartfelt gratitude.

A Year of Change and New Beginnings
The launch of the new DBIS version marked a major milestone on our journey forward. We understand that this transition has not always been smooth and has demanded considerable patience and flexibility from you as administrators of participating institutions. For this, we want to thank you sincerely!
The new version introduces numerous improvements and will ultimately make your work more efficient. While there is still work to be done, your support and constructive feedback continue to guide us step by step toward a better DBIS for everyone.

Call for Applications: EZB-DBIS Advisory Board
Another important milestone is on the horizon: the reappointment of the EZB-DBIS Advisory Board for the term from May 2025 to April 2028. The board plays a vital role in shaping the future of our services and providing valuable guidance for strategic decisions.
We warmly invite experts from libraries, research institutions, and other relevant fields to apply by March 15, 2025. For more information, please visit our website: EZB-DBIS Advisory Board.

Thanks and Looking Ahead
We thank you for your support and trust throughout this year. 2024 was a year of change, and we could not have navigated it successfully without you. Your dedication and valuable contributions are the foundation of our progress.
The DBIS team will take a winter break starting December 23, 2024, and will be back to support you as usual from January 7, 2025.We wish you and your families a peaceful holiday season and a healthy, successful New Year in 2025.

The DBIS Team

EZB-DBIS Conference on November 12, 2024 in Regensburg

Cornelia Krellner | November 26, 2024

On November 12, 2024, the EZB DBIS conference took place in Regensburg with around 130 participants.

The event offered exciting presentations by experts and the opportunity for intensive exchange at numerous themed tables. As the focus this year was on discussions in smaller groups, there will be no minutes.

In a keynote speech, Brigitte Doß presented the new DBIS version and invited participants to a personal exchange at the discussion table. Many participants took advantage of the opportunity and gained interesting insights into the challenges facing the DBIS project and its current state of development. In addition, many contributed their own perspectives and thus ensured lively discussions.

All the best!

Brigitte Doß | November 22, 2024

Our official project period ended at the end of October and we are very sorry that we had to say goodbye to our project colleague Lisa Hartlmüller. Up until her last day here, Lisa was fully committed to training the admins for the new DBIS version. Lisa, we will miss you very much and wish you all the best for the future!

Farewell from the DBIS team

Lisa Hartlmüller | October 30, 2024

Over the past 1.5 years, I have had the pleasure of accompanying the roll-out of the new DBIS version. I am delighted that we have now rolled out the new version and that you can start working with it! At the end of the project, it is now time for me to set sail and look for a new professional challenge.
I would like to thank the DBIS team for the appreciative and constructive cooperation. A great deal of thought and work has gone into the project and I look forward to seeing how the cooperation with DBIS develops in the future.
I would also like to thank you, the DBIS community, for your appreciative cooperation. Be it at presentations, virtual office hours or in direct contact. I have always greatly appreciated the interaction with you, your contributions and feedback as an enrichment for the project.
I wish you a good start to your work with the new DBIS version!

Go Live of the new DBIS version on October 15, 2024

Brigitte Doß | October 12, 2024

The new DBIS version will go live on October 15, 2024! We say goodbye here:



And are already looking forward to the new version:

Tidbit of Information #10 The new DBIS version: Admins - Structural changes: Link Databases

Lisa Hartlmüller | September 20, 2024

In todays tidbit of information, we explain the new procedure for linking databases.

The situation in the current old DBIS version is not ideal. Included sub-databases appear without any connection to the main database and sometimes look like duplicates to the user. For example, there are currently separate database entries for “Web of Science”, “Web of Science Core Collection”, “Web of Science / Science Citation Index Expanded” and “Web of Science / Social Sciences Citation Index”.

Databases can be linked with each other in the new DBIS:
If we want to link equivalent databases, we can link them as “Is related to” . For example, the databases “Business Source Complete”, “Business Source Elite” and “Business Source Ultimate” from EBSCO could be linked.
These are not duplicates, as different volumes of this database have different database titles.
With a link, however, at least a certain affinity is visible.
The “Is related to” relation is also intended to cover the special case of linking a free database recording with a recording of the same database that is subject to licensing, as already mentioned in Info Tidbit #8.
Once links have been created in Admin, they exist globally in the database for all institutions.
Link information is displayed both in the detailed view and in the hit list.

If there is a parent-child relationship or one of the databases is clearly a main database and has several sub-databases, this can be linked via “Contains” and “Is part of” . For example, the Alexander Street Drama database contains seven individual databases as a package, all of which can also be accessed individually and therefore deserve their own inclusion according to the DBIS inclusion rules (and should not only be linked in the description text - if only for the reason that the clicks on them do not count for the DBIS statistics).
The individual databases can now also be recorded in DBIS and linked as “sub-databases” with Alexander Street Drama as the “main database”.

In the “Web of Science” example already mentioned, the links even extend over several levels.
Here, “Web of Science” is defined as the main database, with “Web of Science Core Collection” and “Medline” and other databases as sub-databases on one level.
The “Core Collection” itself contains further sub-databases. The Core Collection contains several individually linked sub-databases and is also linked to Web of Science via “Is part of”.
If you now search for one of the main or sub-databases, you will be navigated through the hierarchies of the links via these various links.

We hope to be able to map related databases in a more structured way in the new DBIS.

Tidbit of Information #9 The new DBIS version: Admins - Structural changes: Licenses and access / Part 2

Lisa Hartlmüller und Brigitte Doß | September 17, 2024

In this tidbit of information #9, we inform you about further innovations in the area of licenses and access (see part 1 in tidbit of information #8). In the new DBIS version, the license types presented in the last info mail (e.g. Local License) may be further subdivided into license types (e.g. normal Local License or Test License). No license type needs to be selected for the Freely available license type. The Local license can be both a normal Local License and a Test License. These two license types Freely available and Local License can be created by the Administration role.

In addition to these licenses, there are also a number of more specific license types with different license forms that cannot be issued with the normal rights of an administrator in the Administration role:

National Licenses and Consortial Licenses can each be created by the negotiating institutions with the extension of the Administration role to include the additional rights Editing national licenses and Editing consortial licenses. These licenses can then be reused by admins from other institutions with standard rights.

In addition, the Specialised Information Services (in German Fachinformationsdienste; abbreviated as FIDs) and the Competence Center for Licensing of Electronic Resources (in German Kompetenzzentrum für die Lizenzierung elektronischer Ressourcen; abbreviated as KfL) receive special administration rights that entitle them to create and maintain FID licenses. There are three types of FID licenses: FID national license, FID community license and the FID campus license. These licenses can then also be used by administrators of other institutions.

The ZB MED receives special administration rights that authorize the creation and maintenance of remote access licenses. This license can then also be reused by administrators at other institutions. The remote access license type currently only includes the ZB MED license type. If other institutions also offer remote access licenses, we can create additional license types in DBIS under the license type Remote access.

This procedure ensures high quality in the creation of these standardized licenses and makes it as easy as possible for admins of all institutions to attach themselves to an existing license.

For the sake of clarity, we list the new license types with the corresponding license forms in a table below:

• Freely available
• Local License
• Local License
• Test License
• National License
• FID License
• FID National License
• FID User License
• FID Campus License
• Consortial License
• Remote Access
• ZB MED

• Access after Authentication
• Individual Registration Required
• Other Access Conditions

• Local University Network
• On-Site Access
• Shibboleth
• EZProxy
• HAN
• Link with Registration
• Single Workstation

Tidbit of Information #8 The new DBIS version: Admins - Structural changes: Licenses and Access / Part 1

Lisa Hartlmüller und Brigitte Doß | September 16, 2024

In this Tidbit of Information #8, we inform you about new features for licenses and accesses, as there are some far-reaching changes here.

The first major change is that a license and its accesses are no longer inextricably linked to a database acquisition, as was the case in the old DBIS version. In the new DBIS, license-independent metadata is entered first when a new database is added. Various licenses can then be attached to this metadata via a second tab Licenses and one or more accesses can be attached to these licenses (exception: For a database that is only partially freely available online, a separate free recording is created and another license for the other license types, as we want to avoid a green-yellow or green-red traffic light. The two database records can at least be linked in the new DBIS). This will avoid many duplicates and duplicate work in the future!

We would first like to compare the old access types with the new >license types in order to understand all the changes here.

The old globally valid access types were

• free on the web
• subject to a license
• a fee-based pay-per-use offer
• freely accessible throughout Germany (DFG-funded national license)

• Freely available (corresponds to free on the web)
• Local License (corresponds to subject to license)
• National License (corresponds to freely accessible throughout Germany (DFG-funded national license))
• FID License (NEW! Previously could only be mapped using the workaround of defining a local access type of subject to license)
• Consortial License (NEW! For licenses that are created by consortium offices and can be reused by participating institutions).
• Remote Access (NEW! Previously could only be mapped via the workaround of defining a local access type of subject to license)


The former access type a chargeable pay-per-use offer is no longer available. This access type was originally created for pay-per-use offers from the Bavarian State Library. As these services no longer exist, the EZB-DBIS Advisory Board recommended that this type of access should no longer be offered. Should such library services become available again, this type of access could be reintroduced in DBIS.

As the changes to licenses and access are quite extensive, we will continue with this topic in the next Info Tidbit #9. There we will explain how we further subdivide these license types into license forms and how the associated accesses can be differentiated into access types and access forms. We will also look at which role in the rights system has which rights with regard to licensing.

Tidbit of Information #7 The new DBIS version: Admins - Structural Changes: Roles and Rights

Lisa Hartlmüller und Brigitte Doß | September 10, 2024

We started registration as the first step of the roll-out and almost 400 users have already registered. If you are a person from an institution using DBIS and have not yet registered here, please contact us at info.dbis@ur.de. We are also happy to offer further registration consultation hours if you need support.

We have introduced a more differentiated roles and rights system in the new DBIS.

Superadministration Role In the past, we as the DBIS team were unable to provide support for special cases in the administration of institutions, as we ourselves had no authorization in the other views. We have changed this in the new DBIS version and introduced a Superadministration role. This gives us full authorization for all administrative activities of all institutions and all additional rights for license creation, administration of organizations and rights. This role is exclusively for the DBIS team at Regensburg University Library.

Now we come to the roles that you can apply for.

Administration Role “Administration is the role you already know. This gives full authorization for all administrative activities of your own institution or institutions in the case of multiple responsibilities.

Subject Library Role

A new role that we have introduced is the Subject Library role. This role is equipped with partial rights and authorizes the administration of top databases and parts of the Quality Management menu item, e.g. the editing of controlled vocabulary index terms. It is also possible to view internal fields. Moreover it is planned that persons with the role of subject librarian from institutions that do not automatically re-use freely available databases will be able to view the newly entered freely available databases of a subject and decide whether to display them in their own view. Colleagues with the role of subject library should also be able to use the statistics. We recommend that you use the initial period after activation of the admin to familiarize yourself with the new DBIS as an adminand only involve the subject librarians, subject libraries or sub-libraries in your institution over the next few months (if desired).

Additional rights for consortium licenses, national licenses, FID licenses, remote access licenses

We have also thought about how we can deal with the additional rights for creating licenses for consortium licenses, national licenses, FID licenses and remote access licenses. Here we have the option of assigning implemented additional rights. The negotiators or authorized persons for these special licenses receive separate rights with which these licenses can be created. The licenses created are visible to all admins and can be reused for their facilities. We will go into this in more detail in the Licenses section of the next info tidbit and will not go into it in depth here for the time being.

We now have several roles with different authorizations, which are reflected in the administration menu, so all users have authorization to work in DBIS that is tailored to their role.

We will also cover these changes in the introductory training course part 1 (dates will be announced via the mailing list – if you are interested in joining the mailing list, please contact info.dbis@ur.de) and will also be happy to support you with registration (please contact info.dbis@ur.de if you would like registration consultation).

Tidbit of Information #6 The new DBIS version: URL-BIBID and organizational data

Lisa Hartlmüller und Brigitte Doß | September 5, 2024

In this Tidbit of information #6, we provide information about the IDs of the participating institutions and the migration of the organizational data.

An important component of the technical implementation in recent months was the import of the organizational data. To this end, the IDs between the EZB and DBIS were first analyzed and standardized. The EZB ID (EZB-BIDID) was adopted as the leading ID. As a rule, this means introducing the ID in capital letters, but there are also IDs that have changed beyond this.

The new, harmonized IDs were imported into the new DBIS as URL-BIBID and are to be used for all three UR Library services DBIS, EZB and RVK in the future. The old DBIS ID of the organization is carried as an identifier in the new DBIS and can be viewed in Admin under Organization data.

The organizational data is available in German and English, whereby the existing English organizational data has been transferred from the EZB. Missing English organization names can be added independently in the administration as soon as it is available.

In addition to training, we will also offer separate consultation hours for the maintenance of organizational data in order to support the changeover as well as possible.

Tidbit of Information #5 The new DBIS version: Subjects

Lisa Hartlmüller und Brigitte Doß | September 4, 2024

In this Tidbit of information #5, we focus on subject areas. In the new DBIS, we are introducing subject headings in the same way as in the Electronic Journals Library (EZB). They are defined and named using the Regensburger Verbundklassifikation (RVK).

In the new DBIS, detailed RVK notations from the RVK standard file can be assigned to a database in addition to the subject area. Discussions about renaming and new subject areas will take place in the RVK community. This is an example of how synergies are used in the UR Library product family.

The introduction of the RVK subject areas analogous to EZB leads to restructuring with mergers of individual subject areas, renaming and new subject areas. These differences are explained in the following sections:

Merger:

The subject areas of chemistry and pharmacy were separate in the old DBIS. In the new DBIS, they are managed as the subject area Chemistry and Pharmacy in the same way as the EZB. When the two subject areas were merged, the keywords Chemistry or Pharmacy were added so as not to lose any categorization.

The subject areas Biology and Process Engineering, Biotechnology, Food Technology have been merged into the new subject area Biology, Biotechnology.

Renaming:

The new structure will also result in the renaming of subject areas. For example, General Technolgy will become Technology and Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science, Manufacturing Engineering, Mining and Metallurgy, Transport Engineering, Precision Engineering will become Materials Science and Manufacturing Engineering.



New subject areas:

Five new subject areas are added:

• History of Education
• Health Sciences
• Mechanical Engineering
• Military Science
• Nature Conservation, Environmental Protection

Tidbit of Information #4 The new DBIS version: Database types

Lisa Hartlmüller und Brigitte Doß | August 29, 2024

In this tidbit of information #4, we would like to draw your attention to changes in database types from the old to the new DBIS. There are two renames and one new database type.

Renaming

Firstly, the image database will become Collection of Non-Textual Materials. This means that collections of images, photos, videos, audio formats, multimedia and object databases also fall under this database type. In recent years, you have often expressed the wish to create more suitable database types here.

On the other hand, Dissertation Directory becomes Disciplinary repositories. This database type therefore includes disciplinary repositories and cross-institutional document servers.

New database type

The new database type that has been added is Disciplinary Research Data Repositories, i.e. databases that publish research data in a searchable form. The database Global Biodiversity Information Facility is an example that is already entered in the old DBIS - there only as a fact database. For this type of database, we would also like to create the option of linking to Re3Data , a search and reference system for research data repositories.

We will discuss these topics in detail in the training courses and are available for further questions.

Tidbit of Information #3 The new DBIS version: Content changes in the DBIS profile

Lisa Hartlmüller und Brigitte Doß | August 27, 2024

In this tidbit of information #3, we explain the changes to the content of the DBIS profile.

Admins will find this profile in the new administration under the menu item DBIS profile once the DBIS administration has been activated. As you can see in the screenshot, it contains a detailed description of the entry criteria for databases in DBIS.



We have held several meetings of the EZB-DBIS Advisory Board to revise the DBIS profile and the database types. What can and cannot be entered in DBIS?

Only minor changes have been made here: Databases may be entered in the DBIS if their content can be searched using a search function and if they meet other formal criteria: Size, Sustainability, Permanent Updating, Academic Nature and Reliability. The only change is that the Academic Nature has been somewhat toned down and the following half-sentence has been added to The database primarily serves scholarly purposes: Or could be a relevant data source for science.

You know that some databases or entire database types, such as General Information Resource, are not and were not purely scientific, but can definitely be a relevant data source for science. Hence this addition

The exceptions have also been updated. The only new item added here is institutional repositories. Institutional repositories are NOT to be included in DBIS, in line with the rule for local OPACs. Disciplinary repositories, on the other hand, may already be included and will even have two new database types of their own, disciplinary repositories and disciplinary research data repositories, which we will discuss in more detail in the next tidbit of information.

In addition, two exceptions have been added to the ban on electronic journals and e-books, which were already handled in this way in DBIS in the past, but were not included in the rules:

On the one hand, Packages or portals containing journals or periodicals and other types of media may be included and, thanks to new technical possibilities in the new version, and linked to the EZB.

On the other hand, analogously for e-books: Packages or portals containing e-books or e-books and other types of media may be included.

As announced in the previous tidbits of information, we will discuss these topics in detail in the training sessions. If you have any further questions, we have planned consultation hours to provide you with the best possible support during the transition.

Tidbit of Information #2 The new DBIS version: User interface

Lisa Hartlmüller | August 23, 2024

In this tidbit of information #2, we inform you about changes in the user interface, which has been given functionalities in addition to the central search slot on the homepage and a modern tile look in the results list.



Elasticsearch:
We have been able to significantly improve the search functionality in the new DBIS with the introduction of Elasticsearch. If you search for the database “ERIC” in the old DBIS, it is displayed as one of 768 hits in the Regensburg view, as the substring is contained in “American”, among others. In the new DBIS, the ERIC database is displayed as the top hit.



Traffic light:
In the new DBIS, we have introduced the traffic light, similar to the ECB, which indicates licensing. Green indicates freely available databases, yellow indicates databases licensed by your institution and red indicates if the database is not available at my institution.

If you are in the view of an organization, only databases with a green or yellow traffic light are found by default, so that the search leads to the inventory of the selected DBIS view. By activating the availability “Not available at my institution”, the entire database is displayed without having to leave your own DBIS view. This was increasingly requested and is now possible in the new DBIS.

We will discuss these topics in detail in the training courses and we have planned consultation hours for further questions in order to provide you with the best possible support during the changeover.

Tidbit of Information #1 The new DBIS version: About the project

Brigitte Doß | August 22, 2024

Over the next few weeks, we will be writing regular tidbits of information here on the blog so that you can familiarize yourself with the new system now, as the go-live has to be postponed until October due to staff shortages. In the first tidbit of information, we will tell you once again about the main focuses of the project and how we want to give you, the DBIS community, better opportunities for cooperative collaboration and participation.

In a DFG-funded project (German Research Foundation - 440516279), the University Library of Regensburg has been developing DBIS since fall 2020 into a service that adapts even better to the needs of its users.

The three focal points of the project are

• User-oriented further development by involving the community: We have taken the approach of involving you as intensively as possible in the project, including in the requirements elicitation at the beginning of 2021 and in the community testing of the alpha version of the new DBIS at the beginning of 2023.
• Internationalization: Both the end user view and the administration are available in German and English in the new DBIS version.
• Data exchange: XML output will continue to work with the new DBIS version on a transitional basis. A new JSON Rest API is being developed in the project. There are also plans to exchange IDs and database metadata with the ZDB.

Invitation to the EZB DBIS Conference on November 12, 2024

Lisa Hartlmüller | July 26, 2024

We would like to cordially invite you to this years EZB-DBIS Conference on November 12th in Regensburg. In addition to exciting keynote speeches by our long-standing cooperation and project partners, we have planned sufficient time for themed tables where the experts will be happy to answer your questions.

There will also be a table for discussing the new DBIS.

Further information and the complete program can be found here: ”EZB-DBIS Conference Programme” If you would like to attend the ECB DBIS conference, please register by the end of October via the following link: ”Register to EZB DBIS Conference”

We hope to welcome you in person soon in beautiful Regensburg and look forward to your participation and exciting discussions. Please note, that the Conference will be held in German.

Final Spurt: Registration, Freezing and other Preparations for the New DBIS Version

Brigitte Doß | July 10, 2024

Since mid-June, administrators of user institutions have been able to register for an account in the new DBIS version. Over 250 administration accounts have been created so far. Please continue to register diligently. User institutions will receive all important information about the changeover via the DBIS mailing list. If you have not received any information via the mailing list but belong to a DBIS user institution, please contact us (at info.dbis@ur.de). You can also contact us if you would like to join DBIS.
The old administration of the DBIS version was switched off at the end of June. The old DBIS version was frozen with this status in order to be able to migrate the data to the new version. Unfortunately, no data can currently be entered. We are currently working at full speed to prepare everything so that you will soon be able to work in the new DBIS administration.
As part of a two-part introductory training course, you will soon be able to take your first steps in the new DBIS. Over the summer, we will also offer you numerous other opportunities to familiarize yourself with the new DBIS. The new DBIS view will then become visible to students, lecturers and scholars and the old DBIS will be switched off.
For institutions that currently use the XML output, a transition period of approximately one year will still be available. During this period, we ask you to switch to the new JSON Rest API, which will be published in fall 2024.

BiblioCon 2024: When will the new DBIS version go live?

Brigitte Doß | June 10, 2024

At the 112th BiblioCon 2024 in Hamburg, we were able to present the new DBIS version as part of the English presentation ”Relaunch of the Database Information System DBIS: Open Data, Local Views, Global Collaboration”. This presentation was primarily aimed at non-German-speaking organizations, which can now also participate in DBIS thanks to the new English user and admin interfaces. Interested organizations can contact us now!

We also presented the planned schedule until project completion:

The new DBIS version is scheduled to go live on September 1, 2024! In preparation for this, the registration of administrators for the new system will take place shortly. Over the summer, we will be offering user libraries numerous opportunities to familiarize themselves with the new DBIS. Introductions, workshops and consultation hours are planned in order to make optimum use of the new functions and to optimize the institution-specific view in each case.

We also gave a presentation on DBIS at the ZDB user meeting . There we presented the status of a semi-automatic procedure with which new title entries from DBIS and the ZDB ID are to be exchanged in future.

At this conference, we were also involved in presenting the current status of the working group Systemlandschaft E-Ressourcen (https://ag-systemlandschaft.de/) during the and in consultation hours at the stand of the Verbuende. We pointed out that interested parties can continue to participate in this working group.

BiblioCON 2024: We will be there!

Brigitte Doß | March 8, 2024

The DBIS team will be represented with two presentations at the 112th BiblioCON 2024:
On Tuesday June 4, 2024, we will present the talk ”Relaunch of the Database Information System DBIS: Open Data, Local Views, Global Collaboration” late in the afternoon and on Wednesday, June 5, 2024, we will present the ZDB-DBIS collaboration at the ZDB User Meeting in the morning.
We look forward to meeting some of you on site in Hamburg before there will be another opportunity for personal exchange at a presence user meeting in Regensburg in the fall (Save-the-Date: Tuesday, November 12, 2024. EZB-DBIS Conference in Regensburg).

The year 2023 is coming to an end and we say thank you!

Lisa Hartlmüller | December 19, 2023

The year 2023 is coming to an end and we say thank you! As the DBIS team, we can look back on a full and eventful 2023, which we would like to reflect on in excerpts here.

We started with the community testing of the alpha version. The alpha version was put through its paces by you, and we received a lot of very helpful feedback. Your valuable feedback helped us to improve our project and respond to the needs of our users. Thank you again for your support!

We are continuously working on implementing the changes in the beta version. We have currently linked the keywords to the GND table. This is something that we had planned to implement later, but we are responding to the communitys wishes earlier than planned. We have implemented a quality control for keywords that are already in use and do not correspond to the GND. These keywords can be edited cooperatively in the beta version. We are already looking forward to making these changes available to you!

One of our highlights this year was BiblioCON in Hanover! Here we were able to present our product family and engage in valuable discussions with you. These encounters are a great motivator!
Thanks to our change in the DBIS team, we can not only support IT with non-technical preparation, but also devote more time to public relations work. For example, we attended the 24th DINI Annual Conference in Stuttgart and were able to present our poster.

We were also delighted that so many of you took the opportunity to join us virtually at this years user meeting on November 7, 2023. We presented the status of DBIS and the modernization project. We are extremely pleased that the feedback was consistently positive!

We also greatly appreciate the cooperation with our Advisory Board! This year, a virtual advisory board meeting was held on 03.05.2023. Due to the extreme weather conditions, we had to offer the Advisory Board meeting, which was planned for December 7, 2023 in person, as a hybrid event at short notice. This is technically possible, but we are hoping for a more direct exchange at our next Advisory Board meeting in the spring. But whether virtual, hybrid or in person, we always benefit greatly from the discussions and input of our Advisory Board and we would also like to say a big thank you at the end of the year!

We are grateful for the support you have given us throughout the year! We look forward to continuing to improve our work and grow in collaboration with our valued community. We wish you a relaxing end to 2023, happy holidays and a happy new year!

Green, yellow, red - DBIS gets a traffic light!

Lisa Hartlmüller | November 16, 2023

The development of the new DBIS continues step by step and the beta version continues to take shape. We are incorporating the feedback from the community testing and are always putting together the next development packages with your wishes and suggestions in mind.
For example, we have collected the following feedback:

I slightly miss the traffic light design for availability in a hit list or in the overview of subject areas to see at a glance what is free and what there is no access to.

and

I also think the traffic light design makes sense from the users point of view. At the very least, the information on access should be more eye-catching.

In the previous DBIS, only free and licensed databases were displayed. The DBIS institutions use different icons to differentiate between free and licensed databases and possibly also several icons to differentiate between different license types and access conditions of the databases they license. In the new DBIS, this is to be kept visually simpler: Green for freely accessible databases, yellow for licensed databases.
With the ability to display all three colors of the traffic light, a traffic light symbol now makes sense to us and we are very happy to incorporate this idea! On the one hand, this gives us a clear, visual overview of the licenses that catch the eye and, on the other hand, we are happy about every step that brings us closer together as a product family. The ECB has long had a traffic light to make it easier to differentiate between licenses and the new DBIS now has a similar design!

We were able to present these and other innovations to the community at our virtual DBIS user meeting on November 7, 2023. Over 200 participants were informed about the current status of DBIS and developments in the DFG project. The event was rounded off with an insight into the work of the EZB-DBIS advisory board and the e-resources system landscape working group. We are delighted with the large turnout of over 200 participants and the appreciative feedback on AWT 2023!!

Poster presentation at the 24th DINI Annual Conference

Lisa Hartlmüller | October 23, 2023

The 24th DINI Annual Conference took place from 04 to 05.10.2023 in Stuttgart under the motto Cooperations - institutional to international. As we have been actively shaping cooperation with DBIS for decades, we were very happy to be represented with our poster Strong synergies for libraries: DBIS and UR Library Services focus on institutional cooperation and effective networking.

We showed how much we care about the topic of collaborations in a variety of ways:

Starting with the fact that the three services of the UB Regensburg DBIS, EZB and RVK have been supported for decades by cooperative management of several hundred institutions. Due to the strong cooperation of all colleagues from different institutions, the three services can guarantee high quality and up-to-dateness. It is very nice to have such an active community and we appreciate it very much!
Further, we are strengthening collaborations between the three services through the strategic decision to merge DBIS, EZB, and RVK into one UR Library Services product family. Our guiding principle for the product family is quality through cooperation.

Overall, we are guided by the community idea: URL Services - You are Library, the library is you!

We also see how important the community idea is in the current DBIS project:
The development is not only for the users, but also very much with the users! We were able to count on you and your input as early as the requirements gathering phase: the end users, the DBIS community, the specialized information services (FIDs) and the Competence Center for Licensing (KfL), as well as interested exchange partners. Their input was and is very valuable for us to be able to further develop the DBIS in a user-oriented way.

As a further pillar of our project we see the internationalization, which we want to make possible among other things by an English-language surface beside the German surface. We hope that this will lead to greater international participation in the DBIS community in the future. Furthermore, we consider original language, original script and transcription in the metadata to enable internationalization.
As a third pillar, in addition to user-oriented further development and internationalization, we are striving for increased data exchange with partner institutions. In the long term, we would like to network more closely within the scientific information infrastructure of the libraries. Initial coordination with various data exchange partners has already taken place in order to set the course for strong cooperation in the future.

The poster was presented to the plenary on October 4 during a Mad Minute and afterwards participants could ask questions and discuss at the booth. Of course, our new pens and flyers of the product family could not be missing here!

We would like to thank the DINI for the successful annual conference with varied presentations and constructive discussions on the topic of collaborations, which we will continue to shape institutionally and internationally in the future!

And finally, we invite you to have a look at the poster (in German): https://dini.de/fileadmin/jahrestagungen/2023/DINI_2023_UBR_Hartlmueller_Poster.pdf

Evaluation of the community testing of the alpha version

Lisa Hartlmüller | July 31, 2023

First of all, we as the DBIS team would like to thank you very much for the extensive and detailed feedback on our community testing of the alpha version! We have received a lot of extensive feedback on the tests and beyond and could gain a lot of impulses for the development. It is very nice to be able to involve such an active community and we appreciate the exchange very much! From my experience in other IT projects I can say that this is not always a matter of course.

With this article we would like to inform you about the current status of the project and specifically about the evaluation from the community testing.

From the approximately 100 people who participated in the community testing, we received 912 individual responses, which we recorded and categorized in a first step.

We then assigned urgency levels from 0 - no urgency to 3 - severe urgency to give us an overview.



We have assigned the category none or low urgency when these were praise or suggestions that we cannot realize within the defined DFG-funded project scope. However, we will make a note of these proposals for possible follow-up development.

After this initial categorization, a high level of complexity still remained with 689 responses.

Therefore, we further prioritized urgency levels 2 and 3 into the following categories:
The highest priority is given to all issues that we need to improve to ensure trust in DBIS and search results.

As a first point, we have received a lot of feedback from community testing on search and filtering results. Here, the testing has shown that the solution we originally used for the search function was unfortunately not effective, which is why we are currently switching to a different solution.

With equally high priority, we are working on the topics of licensing and partial databases, which had not yet been implemented at the time of testing, as well as the filtering and display of top databases, in which we are incorporating your well thought-out suggestions.

We are currently addressing these topics systematically in order to be able to include them in the beta version in addition to the focus on data exchange.

In addition, we have gained further feedback and insights from testing, which we also want to take into account.

We would like to achieve a straightforward handling of all admin tasks that arise.

In this course, we will incorporate suggestions for improvement regarding the entry of local/global fields, additional fields, creation and management of collections and titles, as well as the possible specification of additional IDs.

Last but not least, we want DBIS to be a pleasure to use and as a final step we are focusing further on the user interface and would like to further improve the navigation and layout and make it more pleasant to use.
There are many topics that we are currently tackling and we have our hands full. Last but not least, we are therefore also pleased about the praise we have received. The community has thanked us for the possibility of joint testing, but also emphasized the preparation of the community testing and the clearly understandable tasks. We are also pleased that the design is perceived as simple and modern and that you are already looking forward to the new DBIS!

We sincerely thank you for your valuable input and continue to work on the beta version of DBIS with motivation!

Alpha tests, BiblioCON 2023 and new developments in the DBIS team!

Lisa Hartlmüller | May 19, 2023

So much valuable feedback!
It's been a bit quiet here on our blog - we are busy incorporating all the valuable feedback from the alpha version testing. Thank you for your conscientious and diligent testing, helpful hints and suggestions. We are sorting and prioritizing - first bugs are fixed!

DBIS is at the 111th BiblioCON!
From 23 - 26.05.2023 the BiblioCON - formerly 'Bibliothekartag' - will take place again in Hannover. We will be there together with our colleagues from EZB and RVK as a joint product family. Under the guiding principle 'Quality through cooperation', we invite you to a joint exchange on Thursday, May 25, 2023 from 16:30 - 18:00 in Niedersachsenhalle B. At our UR Library Community Meeting: DBIS, EZB and RVK, we will first introduce UR Library Services, which was newly founded in 2022, and then provide insights into the ongoing developments of the three products. Afterwards, we invite you to a personal exchange at one table per product. We are looking forward to impulses and ideas from our community!

New team member!
We are also happy to announce that we will be able to become more active here again in the future - we have a new team member! Lisa Hartlmüller is a new project member in the DBIS project since 01.05.2023 and will devote more time to public relations and communication in addition to project tasks:

Dear colleagues,
Since May, I have been able to support the DBIS team as a project staff member and I am very happy about this new task. Over the last few years, I have gained experience as a business analyst in project management and worked as an interface between controlling, IT and purchasing in the automotive industry. Even though the industries are very different at first glance, exciting parallels can be found with librarianship. The challenges posed by the flood of information in databases can be found in both industries. Now I am looking forward to getting to know all the details so that I can contribute my previous experience to the DBIS project in a targeted manner. Many thanks to all colleagues who have supported me so appreciatively by sharing their expertise on librarianship during the industry change!

Testing begins!

Brigitte Doß | February 16, 2023

We are pleased to announce that the DBIS community will be allowed to test the alpha version of DBIS from February 27 to March 12, 2023. On Monday Feb 27, 2023 starting at 10am we will start with an introduction. Afterwards, the community will extensively put the new alpha DBIS through its paces for two weeks. We hope for diverse feedback, a few bug reports and helpful suggestions! If you didn't receive the link via the DBIS mailing list and still want to test it, please contact us via email!

Who had waited in vain since the last blog entry for us to present the alpha version in the blog: We're very sorry, but we had received so many great suggestions in workshop and during the presentation of the alpha version at the EZB-DBIS-anniversary, that we have incorporated them until now. Therefore, all former workshop and user meeting participants are welcome to take another look at the alpha version and test it!

DBIS in the UR Library Services

Silke Weisheit | October 28, 2022

The University Library of Regensburg is bringing together the library services Database Information System (DBIS), Electronic Journals Library (EZB) and Regensburger Verbundklassifikation (RVK) into a product family, the „UR Library Services“. We had the pleasure of presenting this innovation to you at the EZB-DBIS User Meeting in Regensburg on October, 13th and 14th, 2022. The slogan „Quality through Cooperation“ expresses what our services DBIS, EZB and RVK stand for: All have as a common basic idea the cooperative orientation of the respective service. As part of the newly established product family, the library services DBIS, EZB and RVK will be more efficiently networked and better coordinated in the future.

More information about the UR Library Services can be found on this page.

The product family ”UR Library Services“ @url_services is also represented on Twitter.

In the first step, the web interfaces of the three products will be visually harmonized. For DBIS, the visual redesign will take place in the context of the release of the new DBIS version in the context of the DFG project. You have already been able to examine the first ideas for the redesign at the EZB-DBIS Anniversary. If you did not attend the user meeting and thus did not yet have an insight into the alpha version of DBIS: We will present the alpha version to you soon in the project blog. In a few months, the entire DBIS community will also be able to test the alpha version!

A successful new start!

Brigitte Doß | October 24, 2022

Our colleague Luis Moßburger has strongly influenced the DBIS project with his ideas. Unfortunately, he is leaving the University Library of Regensburg at the end of this month, which the whole DBIS team regrets very much. But we know about his new exciting challenge and can understand it and wish him much success for his further way! Luis was still fully involved in the EZB-DBIS anniversary, as all participants noticed at the bugfest of the alpha version during the anniversary event (we will report here soon). Also in the run-up to the timely completion and release of the DBIS alpha version we showed together again what a great team we were! Thanks, Luis! See you at the next (alumni) DBIS team meeting!

Thank you - and all the best!

Luis Moßburger | October 20, 2022

After several years on the DBIS team, I am facing a career change and will be leaving the team with a heavy heart. Time to say thank you. First and foremost for the team spirit in this group. At the beginning of our project, we gave ourselves a vision and mission that have always encouraged me. To show every person a way to scholarly information - I especially enjoyed and passionately worked on this third part of the vision. And thats what we all do, the team and the community behind DBIS, and why every year millions of people find the right path because of us - every 4.5 second on average!

I am also grateful for everything I have been able to learn here. From good software architecture and development in the project to various forms of visual and organizational design to stakeholder communication and project management. But I especially appreciate what I was able to observe and take away here about teamwork and team spirit. Trusting each other, learning from each others expertise, reflecting together on progress, pitfalls and potential - in short, creating a great atmosphere.

The people I was able to work with here - both in the community and in the team - have impressed and shaped me. I am infinitely grateful that I could be part of this..

Thank you - and all the best!

Happy Birthday to DBIS!

Claudia Reisinger | October 19, 2022

On 13 October, embedded in the EZB-DBIS user meeting, we celebrated the 20th birthday of the Database Information System. We were very pleased to welcome more than 80 guests to celebrate 20 years of DBIS and 25 years of EZB at the University of Regensburg. Numerous words of greeting from supporters and fellow campaigners in person and on video, as well as a musical journey back in time to the formative years of EZB and DBIS by the Uni Jazz Trio, created an atmospheric festive event. Afterwards, all those present were able to exchange ideas in person, and a delicious buffet contributed to the good mood.

Test the DBIS Alpha Version at the anniversary celebration

Luis Moßburger | August 11, 2022

Its been a while since the last update on the development status of DBIS and IT should not be a black box for us - high time to lift the curtain a bit! In the last weeks and months we have achieved a lot. To name just three points:

1. the search and browsing in DBIS now work much better - there is a relevance sorting, a revised advanced search and filters for the search results (e.g. on availability, subject areas, database types or time periods).
2. we have revised our data models - new fields have been added (e.g. to update a database), old ones have been revised (e.g. licenses can now be mapped better) and: Each field can be overwritten locally in the new version, if necessary.
3. administration becomes more comfortable - better forms, bilingualism also for metadata in forms, switching between multiple managed organizations and more modern design.

Curious? We are too, and we want to know what the community thinks about it. Therefore, on the occasion of the double anniversary of DBIS (20 years) and EZB (25 years), there will be a Bugfest workshop in Regensburg, where we want to test with you. Besides that there will be much more program and big news... We are looking forward to meeting many from the DBIS community there - to register, click here: https://ezb.ur.de/ezb2022dbis

Support from the next generation of librarians for the DBIS project

Kim Kügler, Kilian Zänglein und Sebastian Scherübl | July 22, 2022

As part of a student team project, we – Kim, Kilian and Sebastian, three students at the Department of Archives and Librarianship at the University of Public Service in Bavaria - designed mockups for the future DBIS home page. The basis for the design was the preceding persona study of the Regensburg University Library on the use of DBIS. The aim was to implement the findings regarding user expectations in a suitable manner in the designs. The test phase is currently underway, in which we are using structured, interactive surveys to examine our mockups and their various components in terms of their user-friendliness. We are looking forward to the results, which we will be able to present to the DBIS team this coming fall.

Who would like to join the DBIS team?

Brigitte Doß | July 19, 2022

We are looking forward to receiving exciting applications from committed new team members as Junior Fullstack Developer (m/f/d) and as Community Manager (m/f/d) until 01.08.2022! After an eventful spring with the presentation of the DBIS project in the talk Community driven product development in the DBIS project in the session „Von Kennzahlen bis UX: Nutzende im Blick“ at the 8th Library Congress in Leipzig and the founding of the new EZB-DBIS Advisory Board (see entry First meeting of the EZB-DBIS Advisory Board” on 05/24/2022), we are not resting in the summer and continue to develop an alpha version. At the Bugfest during the EZB-DBIS anniversary, you will be able to test the new functionalities for the first time. Registration for the EZB-DBIS anniversary on October 13th and 14th 2022 will be available soon!

First Meeting of the EZB-DBIS Advisory Board

Claudia Reisinger | May 24, 2022

Another important project point has been reached: DBIS has an advisory board! On May 19, 2022, the first advisory board meeting took place. Since the two systems, EZB and DBIS, are closely related and many developments affect both service offerings equally (e.g. profile issues, user interface, data quality and exchange), there is now a joint body for both services, the EZB-DBIS Advisory Board. Thirteen dedicated colleagues from German-speaking countries have been appointed as advisory board members. Many different work areas and library types are covered, so that the further development of DBIS will be in good hands in the future. We will make the minutes of the advisory board meetings available to the entire DBIS and EZB community, so that all non-advisory board members will also be kept up to date. We look forward to many suggestions and new visions for a modern, user-friendly DBIS. After our first meeting was held virtually via Zoom, all Advisory Board members can meet for real in October. On October 12, 2022, the next advisory board meeting is planned in presence at the UB Regensburg, afterwards a common dinner helps to get to know each other better and to exchange ideas. On October 13, we will celebrate our big double anniversary (25 years EZB & 20 years DBIS), where we hope to see you as well.

We quietly say goodbye and are looking for a dedicated new team member

Brigitte Doß | March 18, 2022

We, the DBIS team, would like to thank Felix very much! He has had a lasting positive and innovative influence on our team and the project structure. We were amazed at how quickly a developer can penetrate even the special library material. All in all, Felix was an absolute stroke of luck for the DBIS project. Due to the Corona pandemic, our collaboration was very virtual, but this did not affect the quality of our cooperation in the least. Today we say goodbye to Felix in a small circle at the Unipizzeria - a rare real meeting. We can absolutely understand Felix decision and wish him all the best for his personal and professional future! In order for the project to continue without delay, we are looking for an IT project employee to join our team in what is perhaps the most beautiful city in Germany, or as is often said - the northernmost city in Italy. You will fit in if you are a team player and open to new things as well as to the library world. It is important for us to keep the users in mind while developing! If we have aroused your interest, you can apply for diese Ausschreibung until March 31, 2022.

Farewell and a thank-you

Felix Riedl | March 16, 2022

Due to a career change, I will leave the DBIS project and UBR in April with a heavy heart. I would like to take this opportunity to once again express my sincere thanks to my team and also to all others with whom I was able to work during my time in this great project. I would like to say thank you for the proverbial thinking outside the box that I was able to gain as an (actually) non-specialist in the library world. I was set on fire by the passion and commitment with which people work in this domain. I am also grateful for the opportunity to contribute to an essential piece of infrastructure that supports researchers in Germany and around the world in their projects. As a team, we have already made impressive progress with the new concept and technical expansion. Last but not least, I would like to thank this team for the great collaboration. It will be hard to find a group of such open, competent and creative people with whom it is so much fun to work. I wish my colleagues and the DBIS project all the best and much success for the future. Of course, I will continue to follow the further course of the project with great excitement!

A new advisory board for EZB and DBIS!

Silke Weisheit | March 9, 2022

Several hundred libraries and research institutions from all over the world are involved in collecting and maintaining the high-quality data of the two services Electronic Journals Library (EZB) and Database Information System (DBIS). To provide advice and support for future developments, the University Library of Regensburg, as the operator of both services, has established a joint advisory board for EZB and DBIS. The appointment of the advisory board for the term of office from May 2022 to April 2025 was publicly advertised. "It is very pleasing that the call for tenders met with great interest and that we were able to fill the EZB-DBIS Advisory Board with proven experts," says Dr. André Schüller-Zwierlein, Director of the University Library of Regensburg.

For the period from May 1, 2022 to April 30, 2025, the following thirteen external experts are members of the EZB-DBIS Advisory Board:

• Irene Barbers, Forschungszentrum Jülich
• Christine Baron, hbz - North Rhine-Westphalian Library Service Center
• Dr. Kathrin Behrens, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB)
• Markus Fischer, Swissconsortium
• Friederike Glaab-Kühn, Kompetenzzentrum für die Lizenzierung elektronischer Ressourcen (KfL), Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz
• Tobias Höhnow, Potsdam University Library
• Hans-Jörg Lieder, German Union Catalogue of Serials (ZDB), Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz
• Wolfgang Mayer, Vienna University Library
• Dr. Elisabeth Müller, ZB MED - Information Centre for Life Sciences
• Dr. Tamara Pianos, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics
• Dr. Henriette Rösch, Leipzig University Library
• Adriana Sikora, Max Planck Digital Library
• Dr. Andreas Weber, University and City Library of Cologne

The advisory board represents the wishes and requirements of the participating institutions. The advisory board members advise the University Library of Regensburg on strategic issues, provide suggestions for optimizing the two services, as well as broad impulses for further development.

Dr. Brigitte Doß, head of DBIS, reports: "DBIS is currently being further developed into a web service in a DFG (German Research Foundation) project in broad cooperation with the (inter)national library system, closely based on the new needs of our users. I am pleased about the professional exchange with the EZB-DBIS Advisory Board and about the support by these experts also beyond the project period."

As Chair of the Advisory Board and head of EZB, Silke Weisheit is also pleased: "I very much welcome the fact that some of the members previously serving on the EZB Advisory Board have been reappointed and that the Advisory Board will also be strengthened by the addition of further experts - including from the field of Open Access." In the DFG-funded OpenCost project, the EZB will be expanded by 2025 to include special functions for managing and displaying information on OA publication costs or for assuming publication costs.

The joint advisory board for the EZB and DBIS will focus more on the topic of networking and data exchange in order to integrate the two services into the nationwide information infrastructures. In the working group "E-Resources Systems Landscape" founded by the EZB Advisory Council (and now continued by the EZB-DBIS Advisory Board), a system map will be created that takes into account, as far as possible, all relevant systems used for the management of electronic resources in academic libraries in the German-speaking world and visualizes their data exchange processes.

A look at the numbers

Cornelia Krellner | February 15, 2022

For 2021, the statistics continue to show us that DBIS continues to enjoy support and widespread use in the research community and in the library world. In 2021, we were able to record around 7.0 million accesses, although a look at the last 5 years shows that usage has currently leveled off at this high level +/- around 1 million annual accesses. The number of participating institutions (mainly from Germany) is continuously increasing. Currently, 345 participants are cooperatively entering database descriptions, thus ensuring the high quality of the data. Both the number of databases subject to licensing and the number of free databases are growing steadily. Of the 14,236 databases recorded in 2021, 6,037 were license-free and 8,199 were subject to licensing.

Milestone 4 is done!

Claudia Reisinger | February 7, 2022

The DBIS project team was able to complete Phase Alpha 2 on time on January 31, 2022, meaning we have completed half of the Alpha phase as planned. In this phase, proven functionalities of DBIS could be examined and first ideas for a more modern design could be developed. For example, individual DBIS features such as collections or TOP databases for subject lists will of course remain in the future, but will be modernized and improved in both the administration and the public DBIS view. The detailed view of the databases will also be offered more clearly in the future. The DBIS interface will feature improved navigation as well as filtering and user-friendly search entry points. The DBIS development team and the DBIS administrators of the University Library Regensburg have been in active contact, and the EZB team has already been involved in considerations that could affect both systems, e.g. with regard to data exchange with other systems. We are now looking forward to Phase Alpha 3, which started in February 2022. Now the DBIS metadata, the communication within the DBIS community and the layout functions of the DBIS view will come into focus.

2022!

Luis Moßburger | January 13, 2022

As we enter the new year, we at the DBIS Project are not looking back, but forward! 2022 will be the year in which we reach the alpha version in the project; the year in which we gather and incorporate feedback from our community on this alpha version for the first time; the year in which the joint advisory board of EZB and DBIS is formed; the year of the double anniversary of EZB (25) and DBIS (20). And, most certainly, there is a lot more in store for us that we cant anticipate now.... As a community - together, as in the past years - we will overcome all challenges. The DBIS team is looking forward to 2022 with all of you!

DBIS gets an advisory board!

Brigitte Doß | November 19, 2021

In connection with the workshop with users held at the start of the project, we were able to collect a lot of wishes from the DBIS community. We had already written about this in the earlier article Blazing the trail - together on March 2, 2021 here. In particular, we extracted the technical and functional requirements and took them into account in the project planning. However, there were also many suggestions regarding an improved collaboration in the community as well as the revision of the inclusion criteria of databases and a quality assurance. We would like to initiate a discussion about this in the community. In order to be able to bring these and similar considerations into the community as well as to create the necessary structures for decisions from the community, which go beyond an exchange over the mailing list, we must develop however first appropriate structures. For this reason, we have planned to introduce annual DBIS user meetings from the coming year 2022, as well as to have an advisory board accompany further development and advice on strategic issues. We decided on a joint EZB-DBIS advisory board because there are many similarities between the Electronic Journals Library EZB and DBIS. Both are web-based services that are operated collaboratively. Most of the institutions involved in DBIS are also EZB institutions. At the EZB, user meetings and advisory boards have been established for several years. At this years EZB user meeting on November 18, 2021, the DBIS team was allowed to present the project status in a talk (in German). Also announced at the virtual user meeting was the joint announcement of the EZB and DBIS Advisory Board for the next term. In addition, it was announced that the EZB user meeting and the first DBIS user meeting will be held in the fall of 2022 as part of an anniversary event (25 years of the ECB and 20 years of DBIS!). Have we aroused your interest in accompanying the future planning of the EZB and DBIS for the next three years? If so, apply to be an advisory board member in response to this call for applications (in German) by March 1, 2022.

The first development milestone!

Luis Moßburger | November 3, 2021

In the meantime, we are far beyond the first line of code. After three months of development, we have reached the first programming milestone. To put it in perspective: On the timeline in the last post, we have reached Alpha 1, i.e. 25% of the alpha version. On the one hand, we have been busy with the technical basics - setting up and revising the data structure, getting the server and our programming environment up and running (we work with the program GitLab and automatic tests, as well as manual reviews), and agreeing on a structure for the code. On the other hand, we invested time to improve some features. The focus during this milestone was on several admin functions (create and edit databases, edit DBIS institutions and views in the superadministration for DBIS editors), the bilingualism of the DBIS interfaces, and the search for databases. In Alpha 2 we will continue with e.g. subject lists, collections, filters, sorting, and the improvement of result lists after searching. Stay tuned ;)

From stories to the first line of code

Constantin Lehenmeier | September 15, 2021

And it's done again. In August 2021, the second milestone of the DFG project was completed. Numerous findings were collected in workshops, user interviews, discussions with potential data exchange partners, and a website navigation analysis. These were then elaborated, reviewed, and documented in the second project phase. The aim is to ensure that the development can take place effectively and efficiently.

For this purpose, the requirements document has been further processed. It contains the collected requirements from interview studies and user workshops in the form of persona stories in a uniform and comprehensible way. As already mentioned in the article from June 17, persona stories help us understand the basic needs of the user groups without getting lost in technical details. The stories were validated and finalized both within the team and specifically with the data exchange partners.

After estimating the workload for the persona stories and the features derived, the stories could be prioritized. For this purpose, the features were discussed and divided into the categories MUST, CAN, SHOULD, and NOT. Feature requirements in the MUST category must be fulfilled in any case, while SHOULD requirements are important but do not necessarily have to be fulfilled. Requirements in the CAN category have no overriding priority and requirements in the NOT category should not be implemented.

In this way, the framework of the project has already been defined. In the implementation phase, the user institutions will be able to test and evaluate implementations of the features based on incrementally developed prototypes and to help shape the design and finalization of the features by testing the finished functionalities.

For the first development phase and the alpha version of the new DBIS, requirements regarding research, administration, and metadata management were selected for implementation. For example, a revised and flexible data model should make it easier for administrators to maintain titles and prevent the inclusion of duplicate entries as best as possible.

In the second development phase, we defined further requirements for the beta version. In addition, feedback from the community on the alpha version is to be incorporated into the beta version. After completion and revision of the beta version, the new DBIS is to be published at the end of 2023. Requirements that did not find a place in alpha and beta can be realized in a possible subsequent project phase of DBIS. An overview of a rough schedule of the DBIS project can be seen in the following figure.

In addition to prioritizing the requirements, a revised data model was designed in preparation for development, and a development environment including the software structure was set up so that implementation could begin immediately. DBIS should not only be functional, but also user-friendly and arranged. So initial thoughts on the visual design were made in a design briefing, and wireframes of important pages of DBIS were created.

With the start of the conception as well as the implementation of the first necessary functionalities of the new DBIS, the next project phase has already been initiated.

The DBIS team thanks you very much for your support and is looking forward to starting the development! And of course, we will keep you informed about the progress of the development with all its ups and downs!

Presentations and a poster

Brigitte Doß | June 30, 2021

In May and June 2021, we took to the stage of a number of events that went beyond discussions with specific project partners and the user community. At DACHELA 2021, the annual user meeting of the DACHELA organization for Ex Libris users in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein, DBIS exchanged ideas with this community about their requirements regarding DBIS. After a short presentation, there was intensive discussion in a break-out room. The INCONECSS Community Meeting No. 2, Access to business and economic information without paywall barriers, was even more international. At this virtual meeting between conferences, economics and business libraries around the globe exchange ideas on this topic. As a one-minute pitch, we presented the possibility of displaying free databases for the subject area of economics and pointed out the English interface for DBIS planned in the project. Here, too, there were interesting discussions in the subsequent break-out room. At the Bibliothekartag 2021, we presented the DBIS project to a broad German-speaking audience in a lecture and were also able to establish profitable contacts with other agile teams with whom we will exchange information in the future via the Community of Practice Agility in Libraries. We now move on to the European Association for Health Information and Libraries Conference EAHIL 2021 in early July, where we will present a filmed poster at a virtual booth. We hope to have exciting discussions and insights about how important DBIS could be for the community around evidence-based medicine in the future. We are excited about our current intensive - albeit currently purely virtual - travel activity and the important food for thought and ideas we receive through these exchanges.

Story Time - Consolidating requirements

Felix Riedl | June 17, 2021

In early June, we have finished documenting all previously identified requirements within the first version of our requirement backlog. Its more than 150 pages consolidate all of the results of the prior requirements elicitation phase, following the persona story format. Thus, all documented requirements are strongly related to our project personas (such as end users and admins). The specifications do not elaborate on technical details or concrete features, but instead focus on the users needs and the benefit gained by fulfilling these needs.

We will transform these specfications in actual designs, solutions and features during the subsequent implementation phase. The requirement backlog will remain mutable during the whole project: This will allow us for flexibly adressing new or changed requirements in the future.

In late June, the management team of UBR will prioritize grouped requirements from the backlog. More fine-grained prioritization later on will also take place in collaboration with our community. Simultaneously, we are preparing for the development kickoff: We are deducing an adequate data model, creating high level planning documents and choosing the right technology for DBIS.

As usual, we will keep you posted in this blog!

Leading DBIS into the future - a status report!

Luis Moßburger | May 7, 2021

Its done. Our first milestone was set for 04/30/2021, and we reached it on time. Originally, only two workshops with users and data exchange institutions were planned. This has turned into much more: An interview study with users, vision & mission for DBIS, discussions with all possible potential partners for DBIS, a navigation analysis and last but not least this project page for transparent insights.

And of course all this is only possible with such an interested and open community as we have here at DBIS! The next steps are a precise requirements definition and prioritization and then a time and milestone planning for the technical development. Until then, we enjoy a slice of pizza and say thank you to everyone who has supported us so far!

Under the hood...

Luis Moßburger | April 30, 2021

Its been a long time since our last blog post - and theres a good reason for that. The last few weeks we have been intensively working on data structures and possible data exchange scenarios. Together with experts for FOLIO, FIDELIO, LAS:eR, GOKb and ZDB, we have discussed future ideas for databases in library infrastructures. On 05.03.2021, a workshop lasting several hours took place in which various scenarios were presented (we have linked the individual slide sets below!). And also afterwards we discussed a lot in the team and exchanged further.

We wrote all these considerations into a report, which of course is published here again. With this, our 1st milestone has been reached! Just like the requirements from the workshop with DBIS admins, the ideas now flow into the next phase, our exact requirements definition and prioritization. When we complete this phase, our idea of the next DBIS is in place and we can get down to the concrete work.

Stay tuned!


Slides on FIDELIO Slides on FOLIO Slides on LAS:eR Slides on ZDB Slides on GOKb

Blazing the trail – together

Felix Riedl | Mar 2, 2021

The core of our mission is the active collaboration of our dedicated user community. This collaboration makes it possible to continuously maintain and extend the substantial and reliable database of DBIS. Thus, including the requirements of this essential target group is very important to us.

On 2.2.2021, we hosted a remote workshop with representatives of 15 highly diverse user institutions and three representatives of the KfL. During the workshop, we have discussed aspects of topics, such as “DBIS instances”, “Database Management” and “Collaboration”. Participants were given the opportunity to contribute their own interests to a free discussion block. The digital whiteboard used in the workshop has been made publicly available and community members, which have not been given the chance to participate, were invited to add their own comments and points to the shared whiteboard.

We can draw a plethora of valuable insights from the statements of the community. They vividly illustrate the expectations and requirements of the user community regarding the extension of DBIS:

Improving the metadata model

An improved metadata model should allow for implementing new license and access models. Also, the update should fix the current problem of duplicate entries.

Communication and role management

A more fine-grained rights manager should allow for modeling complex management structures, such as FIDs, cooperations, and consortial groups.Also, additional channels for communication should improve effective collaboration in the future.

Quality Assurance

Automatic, as well as intellectual mechanisms, should cater to an even higher quality of DBIS entries in form and content. The previous listing is, by far, not complete. We have released an action report with a complete list of the participants’ opinions and requests. We will transform the statements of our participants into formal requirements and connect those with the results of further measures of requirements elicitation.

Networking our knowledge

Luis Moßburger | February 23, 2021

Our vision "To network our knowledge, share it internationally and show every person a way to scholarly information" includes at the forefront: networking our treasure trove of data. For this reason, we are planning a second workshop for early March, this time not with librarians, but with partner institutions for data exchange. For this purpose, specialists from the Competence Center for Licensing "KfL" as operator of the license verification tool FIDELIO for the subject information services ("FID"), and the Zeitschriftendatenbank ZDB, as well as representatives of the "Verbundzentralen" hbz and VZG/GBV, who will give us insight into the license administration system for electronic resources LAS:eR, the further development of the Global Open Knowledgebase GOKb, and the new library system FOLIO. All of these projects are important collaborative partners in the future of DBIS!

Through short presentations and discussions, we will share how we as a project team can help improve library services and our own data flows. We already have many exciting questions on the tip of our tongues - and we'll let you know the answers here again!

A glance back...

Cornelia Krellner | February 15, 2021

The DBIS statistics for the year 2020 are ready. So today we are not looking into the future, but at the current DBIS: The statistics figures for 2020 also show that DBIS is supported and widely used in the research community and in the library world. Since 2010, annual accesses have ranged between 7.0 million and 11.5 million, and in 2020 we could see 8.1 million accesses.

DBIS has grown into a national, well-used, and networked service in recent years. The number of participating institutions (mainly from Germany) is growing continuously. Currently, 339 institutions are participating in DBIS. They ensure the high quality of the data by cooperatively entering database descriptions. Both the number of databases subject to licensing and the number of free databases are increasing from year to year without exception. The total inventory in 2020 was 13,799 databases. Of these, 5,827 were license-free and 7,972 were subject to licensing.

A vision for DBIS!

Luis Moßburger | Februar 3, 2021

As part of the DFG project, our team has been thinking fundamentally about what we and the DBIS service stand for and where we will be in a few years' time. In a moderated workshop, we thought through various questions and gave free rein to our thoughts. From the results, we formulated a mission (what do we stand for and work for) and a vision (where will we be after this project). It is important to us that we share these values openly, both with the DBIS community and with our stakeholders and end users, because this is the only way they can become successful!

Our mission briefly describes the "Why" (We believe in trustworthy information for research and education!), "How" (Through the transparent cooperation of knowledge institutions!) and "What" (We efficiently and individually find the fitting scholarly database!) for DBIS - if you want to learn more about this Why/How/What approach, you can watch Simon Sinek's TEDx talk about it. Our vision extends this mission to include our ambitious goal - what we want to achieve and what we are motivated to put our energy into.

For the next three years, these statements will guide us in our work and we will do our best to fulfill them!

Personas for DBIS!

Luis Moßburger | January 27, 2021

The two workshops on the use and data exchange of and with DBIS are just around the corner - and right on time we can present the results of our usage research! As previously reported, we have analyzed the needs of our users in two ways: Through an analysis of our statistical data and what steps are taken on DBIS (see also our post "A Navigation Analysis" from December 2, 2020) and an interview study with different target groups.

The interviews were conducted with 3-4 representatives of each of the four target groups (pupils, teachers, students, scholars) in early December 2020. Since then, we have transcribed the interviews, "coded" them (i.e., used "codes" to describe exactly what topics statements were made about), and finally combined these 330 codes into large concepts. From all the codes, or topics, and the respective (1073!) quotes about them, we created four personas - each a profile and an "extended persona" with quotes and explanations on 5-7 pages. Here we briefly introduce them.

Personas


Katja Wittmann is a researcher in Digital Humanities, meticulously researching and doing so mostly for good publications and help for her students.


Matthias Hermann is a student at a high school in Heilbronn and is currently preparing for his A Levels. He has to do research mainly for the research seminar in ethics and had a hiking day to the university library for this purpose, which he did not find exhilarating.


Mirabhai Weber is a student of Finnish Studies and is currently planning her master thesis. She wants to tackle research well this time, which is not so easy, because Fennistics is a small subject and from her profs she only knows the library catalogue and Google Scholar - there must be more, right?


Michael Weisshaupt is a high school teacher for Ancient Greek and Latin in Nuremberg. He mostly researches via Google & Wikipedia, rarely also "professionally" for his W-seminar and his part-time authoring.

Results
We can't present all the findings here, but we want to address three points.

Seeing DBIS' context
Almost all of those interviewed had a rather vague understanding of what a database is, which nevertheless mostly got to the heart of the matter. Most use databases quite infrequently, and often only subconsciously because they get to it via a Google Scholar search, for example, or have 2-3 "default" databases. About half already knew DBIS, about a quarter used it irregularly, about every (second) month for specific needs. Some noted they clearly saw potential in using DBIS for their research (e.g., to recommend t to research seminar students, to obtain more qualitative evidence, or to search more specifically on one's own topic), especially those who generally do more detailed research.

Improve our service
There was broad agreement on the concept of DBIS, that is, that databases be collected and made "discoverable." DBIS satisfies specific research needs for proper access or when research needs to be of very high quality. Challenges for improvement are an interface that very tidily conveys only the essential info (e.g. a little more info about a database in the search result list instead of just the title), the overall long path to a database (from opening the browser to the actual database) a better search and recommendation in the system, and more convenient authentication, but preferably without an additional DBIS account.

Becoming more prominent
Some statements were related to the fact that DBIS might be needed, but it is not prominently enough displayed by lecturers or the library website. So for us, this means integrating DBIS more clearly with other systems and gathering best practices. It also became very clear that research tools and strategies once taught - regardless of whether they work well - are retained for a long time. Thus, a priority should be to promote DBIS more to faculty as a research tool.

Conclusion
For the rest of the project, we now have over 1000 statements from our target groups from a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds, and with the 4 personas, a kind of "jury" for what we are developing. We will continually use these insights to determine if DBIS is appropriate for our users. The process itself of actively soliciting the opinions of the users has been extremely well received - and it has given us a real vision of what we want to achieve.

Organizational reinforcement

Silke Weisheit | January 18, 2021

Since the beginning of the year, I have had the privilege of managing the EZB/DBIS area, which is now located in the IT department of the Regensburg University Library. As an information systems specialist and now also an academic librarian librarian, I have been working for the Electronic Journal Library (EZB) for years. Now I would like to bring my experience in the in the technical area for DBIS and to make better use of synergies between DBIS and the EZB.

The DBIS project and the technical management of DBIS will remain in the competent hands of my esteemed colleague colleague Dr. Brigitte Doß. I am very much looking forward to the further cooperation with the DBIS team.

The team grows!

Constantin Lehenmeier | December 18, 2020

Since December I support the DBIS team in the further development of a unique system for scientific research. With my interest in web and software development, I am looking forward to developing and implementing new ideas, concepts and features in a collegial environment. Researchers should be able to achieve their goals effectively and efficiently in a user friendly way. I am excited about the next year and look forward to making my contribution to this system.

Planning user workshop: date and selection of participants

Claudia Reisinger | December 16, 2020

On Tuesday, February 2, 2021, a conceptual workshop will be held in which DBIS users will identify important requirements for the new DBIS 2.0. We were able to attract participants with a wide variety of backgrounds. We had to limit the number of participants so that the workshop would not be too large and work could be done constructively. Since the project proposal already identified the Specialised Information Services (in German Fachinformationsdienste =FIDs) as a relatively new user group whose needs DBIS currently cannot fully meet, participants from the Centre of Competence for the Licensing of Electronic Resources (in German Kompetenzzentrum für Lizenzierung=KfL) were scheduled from the beginning (3 participants).

The University Library Regensburg in-house DBIS team of 8 people will conduct and facilitate the workshop. The largest group in the workshop with 15 seats is expected to be the active DBIS user libraries. We had asked the community via the mailing list that if you were interested in participating, please contact us. We had received a lot of feedback for the workshop and were very happy about the great willingness to participate in the redesign of DBIS, but then had to limit ourselves to 15 applicants, which was not easy for us. As announced in advance, we have selected the participants in such a way that they cover as broad a spectrum as possible of the DBIS user community and also as diverse as possible areas of activity in the respective library. Among the participants are representatives from all types of libraries (university, college, non-university research institution, state library) and from the participating countries Germany, Austria, Switzerland as well as Italy. We were able to invite very experienced colleagues who have been actively working with DBIS for a long time, but also relatively new users who once again offer a fresh perspective on DBIS.

Some colleagues come more from the IT area, others from media management, still others from the user department, so that many different work areas within the library can be taken into account for the future DBIS redevelopment. Some participants come from large libraries, while others represent small institutions. FIDs are also represented at the workshop. We look forward to this diverse mix and to a lively exchange of ideas.

We exchange ideas!

Brigitte Doß | December 3, 2020

...with re3data
Last week we participated in a virtual workshop with re3data and presented a use case for a possible data exchange with DBIS using our presentation slides (German). It was a very constructive and interesting event organized by re3data. With the help of a series of workshops the colleagues of re3data collected use cases for their DFG project and requirements for the further development of re3data. We are planning something similar with our workshops and discussions in the first quarter of 2021.

...with the DBIS user libraries
At the beginning of this week, we tried to satisfy the curiosity of the DBIS user libraries by presenting our previous plans and first results (my colleague Luis Moßburger has already reported on this here in the article "A Navigation Analysis") as well as our project team in a project presentation (German). During the course of the project, we also attach great importance to involving the DBIS community and want to make our project as transparent as possible. We have already received many valuable ideas and suggestions from the 113 listeners in our project presentation, which we will prepare and publish together with other requirements from user interviews and workshops.

...and with our colleagues from the University Library of Regensburg
Today we presented our project and our team also here in our own house at the university library of Regensburg virtually. Especially in these times, when people don't meet so often in the corridor because of the Covid-19 security measures, this exchange within the large group of colleagues was very valuable and it was also very nice to see many of the 40 participants at least once again on video. We were also able to collect a lot of good points on a virtual whiteboard, what the colleagues of DBIS want to keep and what wishes (and utopias) they have for the new DBIS.

A navigation analysis

Luis Moßburger | December 2, 2020

For the first milestone, it is important for us to investigate exactly how people move around on DBIS, i.e. how they get to the database they are looking for and what steps they take in the process. Even before the interview study, we conducted a "navigation analysis" for this purpose.

This involves evaluating the "log files" of a server - in our case we divided all requests of individual persons (anonymized, don't worry!) into "sessions", which allowed us to identify all steps of a person from the beginning to the end of the visit of DBIS. We divided each call into one of eight actions that can be performed on DBIS: Simple Search, Advanced Search, call the Subject List, call a single Subject, call a Collection, call the Alphabetical List, view a single title on the Detail Page and then actually open the corresponding Database.

If you visualize all sessions in one diagram, you get the "Sankey" diagram from above. It shows how often which steps are executed (here only for the first five). You can see quite clearly that the "ways" "Subject List - Subject - Detail Page - Database", "Subject - Detail Page - Database" and "Detail Page - Database" are strongly represented. Even more clearly one can see that with the ways, which humans take to the popular data base "Beck Online".

Another interesting finding is that the search is used relatively rarely. If you look at the five steps that people take after performing a search, you can see that a large proportion of users were apparently not satisfied with the result and perform another search, switch to the simple search function or even to the subject overview. By the way, a similar picture emerges for the Simple Search.

We cannot show all the findings here, but we can make some assumptions. The search function is in many cases not satisfactory and should probably be closely examined in the new project. In addition, many people move very determinedly to the database they want - so it would be wise to consider which "shortcuts" we can build into DBIS to shorten these paths. These and other assumptions we want to investigate further with our interviews and adapt or extend them if necessary. Of course, we will report on this here as well!


If you want to know more about our navigation analysis, please contact technik.dbis@ur.de at any time!

Your point of view is needed!

Luis Moßburger | November 23, 2020

We want top usability for our Service DBIS!

We are looking for participants for interviews regarding DBIS. We want to find out, how people search for databases and what experiences they make.

We are looking for students (of legal age), researchers and teachers for interviews lasting about 30 minutes in Jitsi Meet. Topics will include processes when researching (in databases) and experiences with DBIS.

Interested? Then write us an e-mail to ux.dbis@ur.de - we are happy to hear more from you!

The team is growing!

Felix Riedl | November 11, 2020

Since November 2020 I support the DBIS-team as IT project staff. My responsibilities lie within the conceptualization and implementation of the technological development of DBIS. Since I am highly passionate about professional Web Engineering and modern Application Architecture, I will be aiming for deeply rooting these concepts within the current system and helping to make it future-proof.

I am looking forward to good cooperation and making my contribution to this great project!

Requirements engineering

Luis Moßburger | October 26, 2020

Our aim is to communicate the project status transparently to provide insights into our project work. Therefore: We are currently working on a precise requirements analysis. This means that we are trying to identify different usage contexts for DBIS and formulate concrete requirements that can be fulfilled and tested in the course of the project. To this end, we will be talking to different target groups, e.g. scholars and students, and ask for feedback on DBIS and their experiences whilst searching in the databases.

We will also establish close contacts with other institutions that process metadata for databases, such as re3data or LAS:eR. And, of course, we are also looking for an exchange of ideas with the many institutions that already have their own DBIS displays or would like to have their own in the future, in order to make our service reliable and flexible for different scenarios. In the future we will also write more about the results here - stay tuned!

Building Bridges

Brigitte Doß | September 11, 2020

The DFG project to modernize DBIS will take full three years. Until then, the current systems must therefore run reliably. In recent weeks and months, several updates have therefore been carried out to guarantee this. The IT security has been improved, all data protection aspects have been reviewed, the administration has been given a new look and each DBIS display has been adapted to one of four proposed layouts, which are being actively used! With these changes, DBIS remains a reliable service for all participating institutions until the major update arrives with this DFG project - and we can focus our efforts on the new features.

P.S.: Of course we will continue to help with questions or comments, as always feel free to write an e-mail to info.dbis@ur.de or technik.dbis@ur.de.

DFG funds granted

Brigitte Doß | April 20, 2020

We are pleased to announce that the German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved funding totalling 486.500 Euros over three years for the further development of DBIS, which will serve the expansion and sustainable operation of this platform. We are currently working on the plan to implement this project. On this page, we will inform about the current status and results for all interested parties during the period of the project. More information can also be found in the press release on the approval of the DFG project (German).