The Centre for Editorial & Intertextual Research at Cardiff University wanted to transfer their Database of British Fiction 1800–1829 onto the Web, and asked me to support them, following on from my work on the Sheffield Hallam University Corvey project.
I firstly worked with them in a consultative role, advising on how to improve the database design, and looking at options and general considerations for a database-driven website.
I
then worked with them developing ASP scripts for extracting information
from the database to present on the web pages.
They had some ambitous requirements for search facilities, and this became one of the most interesting and challenging parts of the project. I managed to find solutions which combined the best features of sophisticated database searches with general ‘Google’-styles keyword searches. The details of how this was achieved can be seen in my short paper on ‘Natural’ searching of database-sourced websites.
More recently, I’ve developed websites for the Database of Mid-Victorian Illustration, and the Y Drych Archive for Cardiff University.