Forintek’s value added pathfinder: a case study

The paper describes the development of a specialised bilingual online database providing hyperlinks to Internet and other resources for researchers. The project grew from the need to provide current information for a new business area coinciding with the wish of the library staff to demonstrate leadership in knowledge management, making information accessible, no matter what its format or geographic location. Steps in planning the project are laid out. International standards for cataloguing electronic resources were not finalised, so the team adopted the best available for their purpose, building in enough flexibility to allow future adaptation. Our experience demonstrates the urgent need for finalised standards and led us to conclude that although consensus building is often desirable, sometimes there is a need to move forward more quickly with defined standards to prevent development stalling or extensive rework being required. Database elements, based on the Dublin Core metadata structure, are detailed.