(Un)Structuring for the Next Generation: New Possibilities for Library Data with NoSQL

For many years, libraries have relied upon relational databases (RDBMS) to store, manipulate, and query various types of data, and this database model works extremely well when data are highly structured. As the data become more complex, however, the relational database model strains under the burden of maintaining complex joins, which can decrease a database's performance and limit its functionality. Furthermore, data are not always best represented in the RDBMS's flat, tabular format. Library data often require flexibility and extensibility to accommodate the increasing volume and variety of library resources and metadata. To address these issues, transforming the underlying structure of data will be as important as transforming the data itself. NoSQL offers an alternative model for efficiently managing dynamic data.