Working Experiences with a Cumulative Index on CAD: “CUMINCAD”

CUMINCAD an acronym for “Cumulative Index on CAD” provides a valuable resource, allowing access, via a searchable index, to the conference papers for both eCAADe and other related organizations with special attention to publications on computer-aided design in architecture, implemented in a web-based environment. Exposure to the Web has changed the ways in which scientists are doing literature studies and retrieve copies of papers. In the past, several information services have been established to assist them, however, most of them are commercial, not available on Internet, or both (i.e. ICONDA, RWSB, URBADISC). Each uses a proprietary search technique, requires a special software and may only To researchers in every discipline, Internet is quickly becoming the dominating environment to do literature studies. Commercial bibliographic databases tend to be too general, are not up-to-date and require special skills and effort to be searched. On the other hand researchers also publish on the Web and collaboratively that can create indexes of relevant publications. CUMINCAD is a bibliographic index that compiles papers related to computer aided architectural design. Implemented with a database, it allows searching and browsing in the ways usual on the Web. It provides a “historical evolution” to learn from previous efforts and draws attention to older original works that could have been ignored because they could not be found on the Web otherwise. The authors believe that CUMINCAD will help focus future CAAD research and improve the education. CUMINCAD work started in 1998 and is available at www.fagg.uni-lj.si/cumincad/. This paper focusses on the design and development of the database and presents some ideas concerning its advanced use in the analysis of research efforts.