An Interview with Dick Greenhaus

E-Mail: dick@digitrad.org

Reprinted with Permission

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askSam: Introduction please?

DICK GREENHAUS: My name is Dick Greenhaus. I'm a retired engineer and a professional magazine editor, and a long-time (nine years or so) askSam user.

askSam: Can you tell me how you use askSam?

DICK GREENHAUS: Well, since 1988 I've been distributing The Digital Tradition, a free-of-charge collection on folk songs that has grown from 400 or so to over 6000. We started out distributing disks, using an askSam file format, to allow people who remembered an odd phrase or so to find the song they were looking for.

As our collection grew, we've added features like keyword searches, and other defined field searches using askSam's indexing feature to speed things up. We also added and a music player that's called up by an askSam hypertext command.

Most recently we've used askSam's Web Publisher to create our web page at http://www.deltablues.com. Conversion from our DOS files was a snap - the whole process was done in an hour or so.

We're currently distributing about 10,000 copies a year, not counting copies that people make (the DT is copy-encouraged), and an average of over 5000 people visit our Web site every day.

askSam: How has askSam made your job any easier, or faster or more efficient?

DICK GREENHAUS: It's probably more accurate to say that askSam has made the Digital Tradition possible, rather than merely easier, faster or more efficient. The ability to import text files directly has enabled us to add 600-odd songs a year, while the various search modes have helped avoid duplications. Searches, most of our users find, are easy and intuitive; files are mercifully compact (our text files are roughly 9 mB, so it's easy to see why we're happy to avoid program overhead). Sorting is fast, and it's easy to make updates and corrections without disturbing the system.  

askSam: How did you decide on askSam?

DICK GREENHAUS: When we started, we decided that a full-text search system was the way to go. We looked at what was available, and askSam was the clear winner in terms of speed, versatility and compactness.  Since then we've looked at other systems, but we see no reason to switch.  

askSam: How does askSam compare to some of the other programs?

DICK GREENHAUS: A couple of full-text search programs were marginally faster than askSam, but didn't support defined fields, and produced much bulkier files. They were also, I felt, clumsier to use.

askSam: Can you tell me about what kind of customer support you have received as a user?

DICK GREENHAUS: Customer support has been friendly, competent and prompt. We're distributing a read-only subset of askSam with our database (licensed by askSam Systems) and we don't anticipate changing.

askSam:  Would you recommend askSam and why?

DICK GREENHAUS: I'd certainly recommend askSam to anyone who's looking for a relatively unstructured database that's easy to use. It works for us.

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Dick Greenhaus

The Digital Tradition

28 Powell Street

Greenwich, CT 06831

Phone:  203-531-7314

E-Mail: dick@digitrad.org

http://www.mudcat.org

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