[roncesvalles]

I'm aware that this may sound dismissive but the solution that the author of the OP is looking for is the World Wide Web itself.

The "small database" in question is, well, an HTML page. It can be shared and passed around by selecting the portions of it that you need and pressing Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V. Search is accomplished by the browser using Ctrl+F. Collaboration can take many forms - wikis, comments, forums, live editing. Links between databases are what URL links are. The database that OP is looking for is a page of text (for unstructured data) or somewhat structured solutions like CSV, JSON, or YAML.

Now, yes, there are certain participants on the WWW who make poor web design choices that cause agreed-upon functionality to break. E.g. unnecessary pagination or accordions breaking Ctrl+F, not offering data for download, not having useful URL paths etc.