Feature Articles

Marquis Who´s Who launched its online database, Marquis Who´s Who on the Web, in the fall of 2002. The online database replaced a CD-ROM that was being used by public, academic and corporate libraries, as well as fundraisers and other research-based organizations. Although we had been licensing various segments of our content to data aggregators in the public, academic and corporate library markets, demand for a database launch of our own was building among these core markets, and in early 2002 we were finally in a technological position to provide a highly sophisticated, powerful online search platform.

Marquis Who´s Who on the Web became the largest biographical database of its kind, providing access to our digital library of over 1 million biographies. It encompassed biographies of people who appeared in nearly all of our print titles back to 1985, including Who´s Who in America and Who´s Who in the World.

The goal of the initial launch was to provide a powerful online research tool with access to Marquis´ complete digital library at the time. Marquis Who´s Who on the Web provided researchers with a single point of entry to search the Marquis library, with advanced searching that expanded well beyond basic name searches for which the print volumes were primarily used. The functionality of the online database drew directly from our internal editorial database, which we had been maintaining electronically for nearly two decades and spent years refining. So all the granularity that existed in the way the biographies were stored internally benefited the search mechanism of the subscription site, allowing researchers to conduct highly targeted searches using any combination of up to 15 different search fields, such as occupation, gender, age, college attended, geography, special interests, and keyword.

Absolutely. We saw tremendous value for libraries and researchers having access to the information online. Because of the accessibility of the information and the way it can be searched and sorted, we´ve seen the online product has created new market segments, as well as grown existing ones, particularly among researchers who use the advanced search to create ‘who´s who´ lists based on the data elements of the biographies including occupation, geography, gender, age, college attended, etc. Some examples of markets that benefit from this enhanced searching are college alumni offices, prospect researchers, and various associations looking for qualified committee members.

We have. After receiving many inquiries from customers about our older ‘Who Was Who in America´ volumes, we decided to tackle digitizing these nine volumes, representing 110,000 biographies from the years 1607 to 1985. This project, which pulled in people from marketing, research, editorial, and technology, was truly a successful group effort, as well as an interesting one to work on. As we started to scope-out the work and make decisions about how customers would be able to search the data, we quickly saw how much more valuable the information would be in digital format than in print.

If you needed to look up the biography of Eli Whitney, you can easily do that using our print directory. But if you forgot his name and needed to find out who invented the cotton gin, you´re out of luck. Having the information online dramatically enhances one´s research. So, for instance, you can do a keyword search using the terms inventor and cotton gin which results in Eli Whitney, as well as Joseph Eve who purportedly invented an earlier version of it. Or you can easily find everyone in our database associated with "the Alamo." You can also do a combined search of occupation and historical era, to find, for example, important people in literature from the first half of the 19^th century. (Other ‘occupations´ you´ll find are Colonists, Explorers & Adventurers, and Outlaws.)

Without question. Probably the most significant change is how our research and editorial staffs approach their work. Since our database is updated daily, they are no longer driven solely by publication cycles; their daily efforts have immediate benefits to our online customers. Although we continue to publish many of our print titles every one or two years, the online database is a living, changing thing. For example, though the next print publication of Who´s Who in American Politics will not publish until May 2009, our staff will be busy updating and writing the biographies of the political and governmental officials as soon as the November 2008 general election results become official. There´s an expectation on the internet for information to be perpetually up-to-date. Marquis Who´s Who has a large, talented staff of content experts working to meet that expectation.

Some of the old books that we were working with were reprints with poor print quality, resulting in some challenges with the scanning. The group we worked with to digitize the books was very effective in isolating questionable words and characters which they would then send to us along with recommended corrections before adding them to the final database.

Another challenge we faced was with the expansion of the abbreviations that are used in our print volumes. We wanted to expand as many abbreviations as possible knowing that the biographies would be much more enjoyable to read online. Shortly after the historical content was added to the database, we stumbled upon a handful of abbreviations that were not correctly expanded. One somewhat humorous example was brought to my attention by a customer while I was at our booth at an ALA Conference. A librarian asked me if I could bring up her biography in our database. When her bio came up, she lightheartedly pointed out an error in her biography, stating that she was a "reference librarian", not a "reformed librarian". Within 24 hours we corrected the "ref." abbreviation so that the reference librarians in our database would have the correct titles.

We continue to refine the search mechanism to help customers find the information they need, quickly and accurately. One enhancement we´re considering is offering alternate spellings and phrases for customer search queries, similar to Google´s "Did you mean . . . ?" feature.

We´re also exploring various web 2.0 features to fully leverage what the internet can offer. For example, we´re looking at technology that would provide "people maps" and "who knows whom" searching to connect the biographical dots within the database using various professional and personal affiliations such as family relationships, education and career history, geography, civic activities, boards people served on, etc. We´re also looking at developing online expert panels in different fields of endeavor, so that organizations such as news media, law firms, consumers, and fellow "who´s who´s" can reach out to people with expertise in a variety of disciplines. And we´re also beginning to explore an online professional networking site with listee-contributed information, articles, photos, blogs, etc., from which we would use any relevant and useful elements for the online subscription site. In the past couple years, our listees have expressed significant interest in being able to connect with one another online, and make their credentials more publicly available vis-à-vis an online platform.