The Digital Press

Libraries and digital humanities projects are exploring new ways to offer rich data discovery without costly servers by using client-side databases running in web browsers. The Data.gov Archive Search demonstrates how large datasets can be queried dynamically via static hosting combined with WebAssembly-powered tools like DuckDB-Wasm.

Why it matters: This approach drastically cuts costs and maintenance while enabling powerful data search and filtering directly in users’ browsers.

The big picture: It challenges the traditional trade-off of expensive infrastructure versus limited static file browsing in long-term digital archives.

The stakes: Performance and load time issues remain hurdles, as client-side databases require careful engineering and can be resource intensive.

Commenters say: Many find this browser-based querying innovative and promising, though some raise concerns about performance, crashes, and practical limits of in-browser data analysis.