Design and Development of an in-Hose Database System For Archival and Manuscript Records Management: The Case of Institute of Ethiopian Studies.
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Date
1998-06
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Ethiopian Study is an area study. "Area study" is a field of study that falls within the scope of
a group of studies which are multi-disciplinary in nature. The Manuscript and Documentation
Center is one of the major units under the Library at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies that
provide important historical information to researchers of area study, to students, staff, foreign
scholars, etc. The materials reflect the cultural heritage of the Ethiopian people. The collection
constitutes at the Center unpublished materials of various types, parchments, photographs,
slides, postcards, microfilms/fiches etc.
The Center has information handling and provision problems due to mainly the unique type of
collection and the existing manual system of preparing finding aids to this unique collection.
It is believed that a computer based information system can help a lot in solving the problems
of Manuscript and Documentation Center. In particular, by enhancing the accessibility of the
manuscript and archival collection to users through providing indexes, query searching,
selective searching by field or key word, and allowing multiple access.
To this end the existing system was analyzed based on extensive interviews conducted with
the staff, document analysis and personal observation. User groups were identified and their
requirements were surveyed using questionnaire. Based on the findings, a system was
designed using an object oriented approach. Finally, a prototype was developed using BASE
for Windows in order to implement the proposed database solution, test it and draw a
recommendations for improvement. Among the problems identified in the existing system are the lack of properly organized
finding aids, poor organization or management of the collection, poor housing, no systematic
recording of in-house collection management (i.e. accession, exhibition and restoration), lack
of trained manpower and problem of security.
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Information Science