The making of the PolyU course scheme database as one of the digitization initiatives of the Pao Yue-Kong library of the Hong Kong polytechnic university

Digitization enables increased availability and use of library materials through advances in digital imaging technology. The paper presents the design of the PolyU Course Scheme Database as one of the digitization initiatives of the Pao Yue-kong Library of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, which is available for remote access starting from 2001. Functionalities of electronic books are added in database design to enhance document interactivity, navigation and retrieval, including provision of hyperlinks to link the Table of Contents to the beginning of chapters, availability of index lists, navigation buttons for moving back and forth among the pages, and full-text search capabilities, etc. In support of the initiative, an in-house database was developed using Microsoft Access which proved to be useful for profiling and management of the Course Scheme Collection by means of VBA codes, look up wizard, filtering, querying, form creation and report generation.