Re: reorganizing from earlier versions

[Mary Bernard <Mary_Bernard>]

Mervyn

> I repeat a comment I have made
> before. Why have more than
> one each of Ibid and Orbis databases? Someone tried to
> explain this to me, and I was not convinced.

Well, let's see. I have 2 bibliographical DBs. One is for books used for
my work, whether or not I own them. For that I use NB's own entry
templates, unaltered. The other is for the books Ian and I own. I have
altered the supplied templates so that they include a line for a Counter
delta (call the file to screen, go to the end, put the cursor on the last
counter delta, and it tells me how many books we have - a bit like
train-spotting, but never mind). Another line tells me where in the house
to find them. Another tells me whether a particular book is part of a
standard edition.

Now all these lines have been made by taking the standard fields in the
own-books DB and the Field Descriptions of a few fields. 

Counter delta is N #
Location [in house] is LL
Standard edition is AD

But in the work DB I use N# and LL for their strictly-legit purposes. I
can't really amalgamate the 2 DBs without apportioning 3 or 4 fields to
the purposes of the own-book DB - and then maybe finding, later on, that
I need them. This summer I acquired 2 book-length MSS, work-related, and
was able to feed them right into a field I'd never used before. I
couldn't have, if I'd already turned that field into the 'counter' field,
for instance.

Not to mention that I *browse* through the own-books db, and I'd forever
be wondering what *that* book is doing there; surely I don't have it, do
I - or making subsets and finding that they contain books I don't have.
And so forth.

All this is to say nothing of my CDs database, which is an IbidPlus DB,
and therefore, I assume, not in discussion? - One really can't enter
useful info about CDs with fields labelled 'book title' 'subsequent cite
title' 'place' 'publisher', etc. You need completely customized field
descriptions and all.

I did, by the way, once try to amalgamate my work and own-books DBs, and
- I forget what happened. I think Ibidem refused to append the one to the
other.

Best wishes from a (so far) unregenerate Ibidem pluralist -

Mary

Mary Bernard
mary_bernard