Editing records from internationally available databases on intelligent terminals

Abstract

The iast 15 years have seen a tremendous growth in the exchange of bibliographic records between organizations, which has been assisted by advances in information technology. The library community has developed UNIMARC and the abstracting and indexing community are using the UNISIST Reference Manual to facilitate the transfer of bibliographic data between databases. Unesco is establishing a Common Communication Format in an attempt to bridge the gap between the library and the A & I community. However, different practices in record creation between organizations providing records mean that records from different sources cannot always be merged comfortably into one database, even if they have been converted into the same exchange format. One way of achieving greater compatibility between records from different databases is by editing the records as they are received. This can be time consuming and can make use of records from outside sources uneconomic. Intelligent terminals can make this more of a practical proposition. They can assist in dialling up the appropriate source database. When the desired record is obtained, changes can be made to it, either by the intervention of the operator or by programs in the terminál which can search for a particular field and make a change to the tag or to the data in a field before adding the record to the file, stored probably on a mainframe computer. This kind of operation is expected to increase in the future, as microprocessors which are the basis of intelligent terminals fali in price.