L.RNI 02D0911 Project Number: RGF-NJA2 -63 NEW ENGLAND JAZZ ALLIANCE HISTORICAL DATABASE An Interactive Qualifying Project Report submitted to the Faculty of the WORCESTER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science by Anthony H. Towne Stephen E. Le Eric McDonough Date: April 25, 2002 Approved: Professor Richard Falco, Advisor Abstract This project involved the creation of a highly successful first-time New England Jazz historical database for the New England Jazz Alliance (NEJA). Professionals in the field and NEJA personnel closely monitored our progress and provided feedback. Members of NEJA, music faculty of WPI, Harvard, and Northeastern, as well as the general public are expected to utilize the database. ii Table of Figures Figure 1 Creation of NEJA1 database 38 Figure 2 Command Line Interface 41 Figure 3 NEJA'S Home Page with Horizontal Menu 43 Figure 4 Page from our project with vertical menu bar 43 Figure 5 The new author's table 44 Figure 6 The Login Screen 46 Figure 7 Submission System main menu 49 Figure 8 Submission Form 53 Figure 9 The Register Button 55 Figure 10 The Title Bar 56 Figure 11 The menu 60 Figure 12 The Audio Submission Screen 62 Figure 13 Photo Submission Page 67 Figure 14 Discography Submission Form 71 Figure 15 Completion of Discography Entry 73 Figure 16 Articles and Interviews Submission Page 75 Figure 17 View of the Articles Data Entry Screen 76 Figure 18 Confirmation of added articles/interviews 80 Figure 19 Update Records Screen 82 Figure 20 Vital statistics update form 85 Figure 21 Update complete 86 Figure 22 Main search window 87 Figure 23 Search Criteria 88 Figure 24 Search results 90 Figure 25 Main artist information screen 93 Figure 26 Link to the artist's full biography 94 Figure 27 Extended biography 95 Figure 28 Images Gallery 97 Figure 29 Audio clips selection screen 99 Figure 30 Discography entries 101 Figure 31 Articles and interviews display screen 102 iii Table of Tables Table 1 Format for vital statistics 15 Table 2 International Cyclopedia of Music and Musicians vital statistics setup 19 Table 3 New College Encyclopedia of Music vital statistics setup 20 Table 4 Grove Concise Encyclopedia of Music vital statistics setup 21 Table 5 NEJA database vital statistics setup 22 Table 6 Database fields and descriptions 39 Table 7 Fields in the Vital Stats Table 52 Table 8 Fields in the Discography Table 70 Table 9 Fields in the Artist Entry Table 74 Table 10 Form Buttons and their actions for the articles/interviews form 77 Table 11 Search Criteria 88 iv Table of Contents ABSTRACT II TABLE OF FIGURES III TABLE OF TABLES IV INTRODUCTION 1 ABOUT THE NEW ENGLAND JAZZ ALLIANCE 1 PROJECT GOALS 2 AREAS OF RESEARCH 3 IMPLEMENTING THE ARCHIVE 4 OTHER CONCERNS 5 BACKGROUND RESEARCH 7 INTERNET RESOURCES 8 ENCYCLOPEDIAS 18 INTERVIEWS 25 MATERIAL REVIEW 31 WEB SITE DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION 37 DATABASE CREATION METHODS 37 DATABASE ACCESS METHODS 41 VISUALIZATION 42 SECURITY 44 THE SUBMISSION PROCESS 46 DATA RETRIEVAL 87 ANALYSIS AND RESULTS 106 RECOMMENDATIONS 107 APPENDICES 110 APPENDIX A: INTERNET REFERENCES 111 APPENDIX B: ENCYCLOPEDIA REFERENCES 118 APPENDIX C: COMPARISON STUDY SPREADSHEET 122 APPENDIX D: ABBREVIATIONS 124 APPENDIX E: INTERVIEW QUESTIONS 126 APPENDIX F: E-MAIL RESPONSES 130 APPENDIX G: WEB PAGE TEMPLATES 136 BIBLIOGRAPHY 139 Introduction Currently there are no existing Internet Web sites that focus on providing information about New England's Jazz musicians from the past and present. Several organizations exist in the New England area that are dedicated to Jazz music and musicians, however none of these organizations currently have an archive containing information on New England's rich Jazz history. There are Web sites on the Internet that contain information on Jazz musicians, but these sites tend to focus on such Jazz geographic centers as New York and New Orleans or on different Jazz styles, such as Swing and Bebop. About the New England Jazz Alliance There is an organization based in Boston, Massachusetts called the New England Jazz Alliance (NEJA). This newly created volunteer organization, founded during the summer of 2001, is dedicated to Jazz in New England. NEJA's mission is to establish a New England Jazz Hall of Fame, promote New England's Jazz Musicians, bring Jazz music to more people, especially the young, celebrate and perpetuate the [Jazz] tradition, and to call attention to today's outstanding New England Artists.' The President of this organization, Mr. Brent Banulis, wanted to create an online archive that would document and store as much information as possible on New England's Jazz musicians. In conjunction with Professor Richard Falco, Director of Jazz Studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), they aimed to create an Interactive Qualifying Project (IQP) http://www.neJazz.org/About/ 1 which would construct an archive that would serve as a massive historical library about Jazz musicians in New England. Project Goals The goals of this project were easy to establish. The archive would have to be publicly available, easy to use, and store historical information on Jazz musicians in New England. This would allow the system to be useful to both researchers and fans alike. In addition to the archive itself, a submission system would need to be created to allow researchers to continually contribute to the archive. The submission process would also have to be easy to use because many different musicologists, historical researchers, and professors with different computer related skill levels would be adding to this database. The final requirement for the submission system design was that it had to allow the contributors to receive credit for their own work, and prevent others from altering it. This system would result in the archive being similar to an Internet based article publication system for the contributors. The project also had to be integrated with the existing NEJA Web site, http://www.neJazz.org/. The IQP team had to work with members involved with the organization such as NEJA President Brent Banulis, NEJA Webmaster Jeremy Hitchcock, and NEJA's graphics artist, Keith Webb. In order to properly integrate the new archive with the existing Web site, the IQP team had to base the layout of the new Web site on the layout of the existing Web site. This would also provide continuity to the entire NEJA Web site. 2 Areas of Research The IQP team separated the project into two major areas. The first of these was the content of the archive and the second was how to build the archive. The team researched the type of content that needed to be included in the history pages by conducting interviews with historians, librarians, musicologists, newspaper writers, Jazz writers, and music faculty from different institutions. This research aided the team in establishing a format for the biography to be included for each artist, in addition to a detailed discography format and in establishing other search options. During this time, the IQP team also conducted research in order to determine the best construction techniques for the Web site and to determine the best data storage formats for the archived material. After consulting several technical manuals and various computer programming related Web sites, the team determined that the Web site would need to be based on a database system. The team found that this implementation would result in a more organized storage system with more security and ease of use than a series of web pages. We decided to use the MySQL database software as the basis of the system due to recommendations by members of the WPI Web Development Team in addition to research conducted by visiting other Web sites based on MySQL. The team also decided to use the PI-IP script language to program the Web site, allowing the database to be accessed and easily searched by the Web site's users. This decision was based on the choice of database software and recommendations of members of the WPI Web Development Team. The data formats decided on were standard text files, or .txt, for the articles, interviews and discographies, the MP3 format for sound clips and the JPG 3 format for pictures. This would allow the fastest download times for visitors to the Web site, since all of these formats have relatively small file sizes. The last portion of the technical research the team conducted was an examination of the existing NEJA Web site. This was to familiarize ourselves with the layout of the Web site and code used to program the Web site. As a result, we would be able to easily create an archive with the same look and feel as the existing NEJA site, and at the same time make it easier to maintain and update both Web sites. Implementing the Archive Once the initial technical research was completed, the team began working to create the database, the storage system used for the data, and the Web site that would be viewed by both the visiting public and contributors. Over a three month period of time, experimentation occurred with database design, Web site security, web page design, search and retrieval methods, and submission methods. The first area of the Web site completed was the database itself, allowing the team to properly test all of the PI-IP scripts written for various forms of database access, such as searches, submitting and retrieval. The remainder of the software was written in PHP. This software consists of several small modules, also referred to as scripts, designed to perform specific tasks such as the previously mentioned search and retrieval scripts.