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Workshop on Digital Libraries, 14 –18 December 2002, Khartoum, Sudan, by Sudan British Council with collaboration with Documentation and Information Centre of National Centre for Research and Sudatel Training Centre: THE IMPACT OF NCR-DIC READINESS IN REALIZING SUDAN DIGITAL LIBRARY / By Rafaa Ashmallah Ghobrial    |
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Conversion of record formats of other databases, which are either on CD-ROM or floppy disks to NCR-DIC databases, which is accomplished through conversion programs. Such type of conversion is very limited as compared to keying from keyboard including data elements not available in the imported databases. Generally conversion of original records can be made to suit NCR-DIC database format, which is ISO 2709.
Where as in commercial non-bibliographic databases, such as Access, FoxPro, and DBASE, the fields are defined to some fixed-length, with no sub-fields or repeatable fields. Which is why they are so unsuitable to bibliographic work where there may be many authors, sub-fields, and fields who length cannot be determined before hand. CDS/ISIS is designed for bibliographic record keeping with great flexibility in database design. The only thing that I found missing were templates to pick fields from that match major international standards, such as, US MARC and ISO-2709. Currently, you need to know before hand what Tag numbers to assign and how to name the corresponding field for the desired standard. You can, however, reformat your data in an import or export operation to match a desired standard.
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