Internet Speculative Fiction Database

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The Internet Speculative Fiction Database ( ISFDB ) is a database for bibliographic information on genres that are counted as speculative fiction, especially science fiction and related genres such as fantasy and horror literature . The ISFDB is a volunteer project where both the database and the wiki are open to editing and user input. The ISFDB database and the source code are available under a Creative Commons license. The data is used by other organizations such as Freebase under the Creative Commons license.

The ISFDB database indexes authors, novels, short stories, editors and magazines. She also supports pseudonyms, series, awards and illustrators (of the cover as well as inside). This data is summarized in integrated author, editor and artist bibliographies. A permanent challenge is the verification of the database against the content of the publications and secondary bibliographical sources, with the aim of correct data and complete coverage of the field of speculative fiction. The current statistics of the database are available online. ISFDB was the winner of the 2005 Wooden Rocket Award in the Best Directory Site category .

Cory Doctorow wrote in Science Fiction Age in 1998 : "The best all-round guide to things science-fictional remains the Internet Speculative Fiction Database" ). Zenkat wrote on Freebase in April 2009 "... is widely regarded as one of the most authoritative sources on science fiction, fantasy and horror literature available on the Internet". ("... it is widely considered one of the most authoritative sources about Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror literature available on the Internet".)

In May 2009, Quantcast estimated that the ISFDB was visited by over 32,000 users per month.

The database structure of the ISFDB served as a real example of a non-trivial database in several tutorials on database programming. For example, the ISFDB schema and data has been used throughout Chapter 9 of the Rails For Java Developers book . It has also been used in a series of Lucid Imagination company's tutorials on Solr, a business search platform.

history

Jerry Boyajian, Gregory JE Rawlings and John Wenn published numerous bibliographies of speculative fiction authors in the USENET newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written from 1984 to 1994 . A more or less standardized format has been developed for these contributions. Many of these bibliographies can still be found on The Linköping Science Fiction Archive . Al von Ruff developed a database for literary prizes in 1993. John RR Levitt created the Speculative Fiction Clearing House (SFCH) in 1994 . In late 1994, he asked for help displaying literary awards, and von Ruff offered his database tools. Leavitt turned it down, however, because he wanted code that could work with other parts of his website. As a result, Al von Ruff and Ahasuerus (a prolific writer on rec.arts.sf.written) began creating the ISFDB in 1995 based on their experience with SFCH and the bibliographic format prepared by John Wenn. The ISFDB went online in September 1995 and the URL was published in January 1996.

The ISFDB was originally hosted with an Internet service provider in Champaign, Illinois , but disk space and database support limitations hampered the website's growth. In October 1997 the ISFDB moved to SF Site , a larger science fiction portal. Due to the increasing costs on SF Site, the ISFDB moved to its own domain in December 2002. However, this website was soon shut down by the provider due to the high consumption of resources.

So, having been offline since January 2003, the site has been hosted by The Cushing Library Science Fiction and Fantasy Research Collection and Institute for Scientific Computation at Texas A&M University since March 2003 . After renewed resource problems with Texas A&M, the ISFDB moved in 2007 to a rented server at the URL given above.

The ISFDB was originally edited by a limited number of people, most notably Al von Ruff and "Ahasuerus". Since 2006, however, editing by the general public has been made possible on a free content basis. To ensure the reliability of the content, changes must be confirmed by a moderator.

Since February 27, 2005 the source code and content of the ISFDB have been under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The SF Site: Science Fiction and Fantasy Sites. sfsite.com, accessed December 12, 2015 .
  2. ↑ a b c Cory Doctorow: Internet Column, September 1998. craphound.com, accessed December 12, 2015 .
  3. ↑ a b ISFDB: General disclaimer - ISFDB. isfdb.org, accessed December 12, 2015 .
  4. ↑ a b Zenkat: The Free Base »Blog Archive» Our latest mass data load: science fiction books. April 14, 2009, archived from the original on May 19, 2012 ; Retrieved December 12, 2015 .
  5. ^ ISFDB Statistics .
  6. ↑ 2005 winners: Wooden Rocket Awards. ( Memento of the original from February 26, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.sfcrowsnest.com
  7. ^ Site Statistics. ( Memento of the original from March 8, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.quantcast.com
  8. ^ Rails For Java Developers. ISBN 0-9776166-9-X . ericdean.com ( Memento of the original from July 10, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / ericdean.com
  9. ↑ Solr Powered ISFDB - Part # 1 ( Memento of the original from March 1, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lucidimagination.com
  10. ↑ a b c d e f g h internet speculative fiction database - Article and Reference from OnPedia.com. March 6, 2012, archived from the original on March 6, 2012 ; Retrieved December 12, 2015 .
  11. ↑ The Linköping Science Fiction & Fantasy Archive. lysator.liu.se, accessed December 12, 2015 .
  12. ↑ What's New. isfdb.org, accessed December 12, 2015 .
  13. ^ Cory Doctorow: Literary treasure needs new home. Boing Boing, accessed December 12, 2015 .
  14. ↑ ISFDB finds new home at Texas A&M - SFWA News. August 11, 2011, archived from the original on August 11, 2011 ; Retrieved December 12, 2015 .
  15. ^ ISFDB rises from the grave. Boing Boing, accessed December 12, 2015 .
  16. ^ Major Contributors - ISFDB. isfdb.org, accessed December 12, 2015 .
  17. ^ Science Fiction Brewed Fresh Daily Blog Archive Changes to the ISFDB. other-worlds-cafe.com, accessed December 12, 2015 .
  18. ^ What's New - Feb 27, 2005. isfdb.org, accessed December 12, 2015 .