LlyfrgellyddIt’s Welsh for librarian.

I’d like to give a shout-out to DabbleDB. DabbleDB seems to be, essentially, a hosted database service. It’s more, though; it also provides you with an interface for tweaking your tables and data. It’s really, really wonderful, and easy to use.

I spent maybe an hour or two playing around with it yesterday. It was super easy to import data from the clunky Access database we’ve been using to keep track of our instruction sessions. I was also able to put together a simple, elegant input form. To me, it seemed really intuitive, though I do have some experience with relational databases, and that undoubtedly made it easier to use.

I think it has a lot of potential applications in libraries – obviously, you could use it for keeping statistics. You could use it for surveys. I’m thinking about using it to keep track of our government documents selections.

It’s not free – personal accounts are $10 a month, others a little more. However, you can get a free account by releasing your data into the Creative Commons, which I think is really cool.

My friend Matt was the one who originally mentioned this resource to me, a few months ago; he and others used it to schedule programming for this year’s Penguicon, which is a local science fiction convention/Linux expo/all-around geekfest. They released their data under the CC, and you can take a look at their database here.