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Italian Databases 2006
Profiles of products, producers and distributors, and analysis of industrial trends

a market research report

Following the popular embrace of Internet, databases have evolved from being specialistic tools reserved for professionals to digital objects of daily use, both at work and in the home, by knowledge workers and less expert users. Databases are physically heterogeneous in that their contents may be viewed either remotely in the Web or locally from removable optical disks on one's personal computer. Even the topics of database contents are highly varied, and so producers of databases come from a wide range of economic sectors. For these reasons, a database "industry" has not generally been recognized, delaying the characterization of its consistency and evolution.

In Italy, the characteristics of these structured digital archives have been revealed in the Guide to Italian Databases, an online catalog that since 1999 has surveyed all databases whose contents are limited geographically to the italic peninsula and therefore are useful tools for finding information on the nation. The latest update to the Guide served as an occasion to prepare this third edition of the Italian database industry market research report, which describes the actual situation as well as the trends observed since 2000. Using a series of graphics and tables, this report analyzes the current offer of Italian databases, distinguished by economic sector, subject, and means of access, characterizes their producers and distributors, and investigates changes in this panorama over the last 6 years.

The scope of this report is to photograph this new industry that remains relatively unknown but which involves a substantial number of public institutions and businesses, both Italian and multinational. This study is intended for a readership of information professionals, database producers and distributors, and anyone interested in publicly available information in general. Within the context of the international debate on freedom of information, this report is a reference regarding the public availability of Italian information in searchable digital archives.

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Table of contents

  • Presentation of the report
  • Presentation of the authors
  • What is an Italian database?
  • Sources
  • The Italian database industry, January 2006
    • Consistency and evolution
    • Modes of access to Italian databases
    • Subjects of Italian databases
    • Types of content
    • Subscription policies
    • Languages
    • Updating frequencies
    • Functional aspects
    • Production of Italian databases
    • Producers and distributors of Italian databases
  • Trends in the Italian database industry, 2000-2006
  • Analysis
  • Appendix I. Full list of databases and producers (and distributors), by subject
  • Appendix II. Full list of database producers and distributors (addresses, tel./fax, email)

This report has been prepared by C. Zulian and V. Matarese.

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