Spreadsheet to Service: Building a Zero-Cost Search Interface (The LACLI Story)
The LACLI project began as an emergency measure to share free, online resources for Latin American, Caribbean, Latinx, and Iberian studies during the pandemic lockdown. It has since grown into a multinational effort of 50 volunteers who have indexed over 1,300 diverse resources.
Spreadsheets: where much good research goes to die, but we hope the LACLI story will inspire others to build a search interface that encourages broader public interaction with meticulously curated research corpora. My talk will chart how LACLI uses Google Apps Script to transform a Google Sheet into an API endpoint. This approach allows collaborators to quickly contribute as no specialized database training is required: they simply edit the Google Sheet. I will cover how we use vanilla JavaScript to create a client-side keyword and faceted search interface. Finally, I will discuss user feedback and LACLI’s relationship with the Latin American Northeast Libraries Network (LANE).