Database management systems for bibliographic information. Purposes, principles, and system designs.

Abstract

The distinction between bibliographic and management-administration informáljon databases can be performed by their purpose and functions. The database management systems (DBMS) for these two purposes and functions differ in that the former type contains parts offering database management by content characteristics of documents and, in addition, by several different aspeets. These characteristics are either the elements given in the documents originally (e.g., title, author, source), or those attached to the documents in a subsequent phase for deseribing their content (e.g., deseriptors, classification codes). This semantic-logic part of the DBMS is called traditionally the information retrieval system. A fraction of the bibliographic information systems is purely information retrieval systems but only few of them are intended for terieval from lextual databases. The other, more significant than the former part of DBMSs (e.g., library circulation, serial control, integrated systems) can contain also a functional-logic part the management of which is based on the functional relation between information (record) types within a given organisation. This part forms essentially the management-administration information system which is called traditionally DBMS. The generál information DBMS consists of a bibliographic information tetrieval part and a functional-logic part connected to each other through files providing direct access and through the formai logic operations (Boolean operations) carried out on them. They form the interconnection or transition part. This threefold structure corres-ponds to a structure containing semantic-logic-syntactic elements. During the planning or purchasing bibliographic information systems these three management functions should be kept in mind. The operational prtnciples of information DBMSs as well as the types of information handled by them. and the special file and record structure requirements are discussed in detail. Finally, the types of DBMSs are categorised according to the types of items and data and to their temporal varialions.