Data In, Data Out: Content Management for the Web
Christine Sonnabend Vitto, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, USA
http://www.ushmm.org/

Session: Managing Content

How do you create quality web sites from your database content? How can you utilize all of the information that your organization collects and generates? The Education Division of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, partnering with our technology experts and other divisions in the Museum, have created an integrated database system (HEDDA) that marries legacy databases with new front-end design, held together by middleware. This system has been designed with the web in mind, and is being used in many creative ways.

This paper will explore various web projects and the database creation process from a project manager's point of view. I will be using examples from our system, such as: 1) a database that was in a flat file format, then was converted to our integrated system and posted on our web site; 2) a database that allows the people whose information is stored in the database itself to edit and update their own records through the web; 3) a database containing data on Holocaust education in the United States that will be posted on our web site in a graphic, interactive format; and, 4) a database that tracks who gets the Museum's educational publications. Visitors to our web site can order materials through a simple web form, and our staff can send that record with one click into the database.

With these examples, I will be able to show how the back-end databases and web sites work together to solve problems for managers and eliminate duplicate efforts across our institution.