CompBlog

Updating: Publishers, Edited Collections, Edited Series, and Archives

As I continue to migrate to the new site, Rich and I are reconsidering a number of spaces / pages. The long-term vision for CompPile includes in part more reliance on database-driven pages, to avoid static pages that require ongoing attention and maintenance to keep them current. Also, with the new search interface and the new export functionality, I wonder if CompPile users really need lists of publishers, series, etc.? Here’s how this “reconsidering” has worked so far:

Publishers: I simply migrated the list of publishers from the old site to the new. It represents a list of publishers indexed in CompPile 1939-1999, but not beyond. Because of the current Db structure, I don’t see easy ways to maintain a list of current publishers, so I think this page will remain as-is and eventually move to an archives section. Whether or not we continue to have navigation links to “Publishers” depends in part on what users might say and in part on how such a list might be maintained.

Edited Collections: I rebuilt this page completely, and it now lists all edited collections indexed in CompPile (over 3200!). This space will update automagically whenever we add entries for edited collections to CompPile. I’m not sure if this is a useful separate page, but it requires no attention, so I’ll leave it for now. Ideally, though, users would be able to generate this kind of list by using the advanced search interface, if I can provide instructions that are relatively straightforward.

Edited Series: As with the list of publishers, this extensive list of edited series is comprehensive for CompPile 1939-1999, but not beyond. Rather than migrate this data, I’ve left it at the old site for now. Because of our current Db structure, I’ve not found a way to capture easily this information for a Db-driven page. This section, too, may be a candidate for an newly-conceived archive.

Archives: For now, I migrated the main list to the new site, but left the various “archived” items on the old server. This section deserves rethinking. I may blog about it later.