What is a database? Why do we call them databases? What else could we call them? Do our patrons know what a “database” is?

My Twitter friends have been discussing this, and with a website redesign coming up, I am very interested in the answers to these questions. Unfortunately, there don’t seem to be any easy answers.

Why not just keep calling them databases, with some simple explanation on the page? That’s been our solution (if this is truly a problem) so far, and it seems to be working. Patrons are finding articles and using the databases. So…why change the status quo?