If I Could Do Anything Over, It Would Be Knowing About askSam Years Ago
By Aimee S. Fitzgerald, MLIS, Director of Prospect Research
Loyola Marymount University
Our office, a medium sized advancement research shop in an educational institution, has generated nearly 2,500 research reports which have been sitting as individual files on a shared network drive. As we are preparing for a new fundraising campaign, we know that we will be generating a significant amount of new research. The problem encountered by both our end users and ourselves lay in managing the data. Where should we keep these? How will we know what we have? What about data size? Who will build this database? What about all the other databases we already have?
I first heard about askSam mentioned as a good database for managing documents on a listserv. I thought I would give it a whirl, but was very skeptical - after all, how could a database be easy? Having built databases in FileMaker Pro (which was the easiest product I knew about), I knew in my soul that databases were not easy at all. I finally got around to scheduling a demo. I had downloaded the askSam trial version four months before, but dreaded trying it and never even opened it up. As our project reached critical mass I returned to the Web site and I saw that you could have a live, personal demonstration of askSam, so I decided that was the way to go for me. I really didn't want to have to learn this software.
I was literally, absolutely blown away. I had tears in my eyes! askSam is truly the most revolutionary database product I have ever seen in my career; I am not exaggerating. When I first saw askSam, it was like the first time I saw a graphical computer interface - a complete shift of my paradigm. I could not believe the capabilities. I saw an infinite number of uses, not only in the office, but all over my personal life for this product. Now I am wondering why every database can't be like askSam!
Even though we have a number of other traditional databases that have cost thousands (in some cases, hundreds of thousands), the features of askSam make it so much more useful in data management than anything we currently have. We could, for instance, attach our documents into our main database. By doing this we lose the amazing ability that askSam has for full-text searching.
In advancement research, connections between individuals and institutions are extremely valuable. We may have identified a number of these connections in an individual report, but never have we had the capability to make connections ACROSS reports. Not only would we not be able to use the full text search in askSam by attaching these into our main database, but we would clog up that system, slowing everything down. askSam's unique data compression and management engine makes all of its searches lightning fast, so we never have to worry about this.
In addition to making connections across the individual profiles, we can easily keep track of the various iterations of reports that we create. On our network drive, even with complex (and sometimes silly) naming conventions, it is extremely difficult to identify which report is the narrative report, which is the executive summary report, which is the tabular data report etc. all for the same entity. Even though askSam can be as un-structured as you want it to be, you can also make anything a field! Since we title our reports with the kind of report it is, askSam will create that list for us automatically.
If I could do anything over in my career, it would be knowing about askSam years ago. When I think back to all the databases I've created, projects I've had to laboriously manually manage, I cringe. If I had known about askSam, I could have saved so much time, increased my productivity and made everything so much easier.
Aimee S. Fitzgerald, MLIS
Director of Prospect Research
Loyola Marymount University
One LMU Drive
University Hall, Suite 2800
Los Angeles, CA 90045-2659
(310) 338-1830
afitzgerald@lmu.edu
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