The Magic of Small Databases: Notes on personal libraries, collections and small indexes on the web | Tom Critchlow, JANUARY 27, 2023

ioi_ab's bookmarks 2023-02-03

Summary:

"...We’ve built many tools for publishing to the web - but I want to make the claim that we have underdeveloped the tools and platforms for publishing collections, indexes and small databases. It’s too hard to build these kinds of experiences, too hard to maintain them and a lack of collaborative tools. Here’s the thesis: Independently published and maintained collections are interesting and valuable. Publishing them to the modern web is too hard and there are few purpose-built tools that help. Collaborating and maintaining them is a tough challenge...

I’d like to call out Datasette in particular. Datasette is “An open source multi-tool for exploring and publishing data” created and maintained by Simon Willison. Of all the projects I’ve come across Datasette feels so closely ideologically aligned to what I want. It’s open source, Simon really cares about helping non-developers use it (via a cloud product, a desktop product etc) - it’s even building out web-scraping functionality! Datasette is like a swiss army knife tool for exploring data but also allows you to publish that data to the web...."

Link:

https://tomcritchlow.com/2023/01/27/small-databases/

From feeds:

[IOI] Open Infrastructure Tracking Project » ioi_ab's bookmarks

Tags:

projects publishing genres standards data tools

Date tagged:

02/03/2023, 10:13

Date published:

02/03/2023, 05:13