Current use and future development of the database of the St. Catherine's Library Conservation Project

The St. Catherine's library conservation project has focussed so far on the condition assessment of the collection, which took place in the St. Catherine?s Monastery in Sinai, Egypt. Detailed information of each of the 3306 manuscripts of the library has been collected. Approximately 1000 observations were made on each manuscript. During the assessment, this information was kept on paper. However, a computer filing system was necessary to store the information in digital format which would then allow quick searching of the data. In this paper, the authors describe the design and implementation of a computer database system which helps organize, categorize and access the collected data quickly and efficiently. The article includes an extensive description of the principles behind the database design. It also refers to the complexity of the recorded data and how this fits the relational database model. The paper concludes by exploring the future development of the database and its transition to XML.