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----------------------------Original message---------------------------- [log in to unmask] wrote: > > ----------------------------Original message---------------------------- > Email Message The British Council > > ............................................................................. > > I would like to hear from anyone who has used Inmagic > (or DB Textworks outside the USA) not so much as a > database per se, but for either: > a.) an online library catalog, or > b.) an art collection catalog. > Pros and cons would be welcome. > Please reply to me at ([log in to unmask]). > If there is any interest I will report back my findings. > Many thanks > Clive Phillpot > Visual Arts > British Council, London, UK. Clive, We've had DB Textworks for about 2 years. we use it as a slide catalogue in the slide library(part of the Art & Design library at Coventry university).It's very user friendly and easy to understand.Search time is fast, you can search with wild cards etc.and global editing is also very quick.Record skeletons or "templates" cut down on the amount of info to be typed in for each record. You can set up validation lists so that certain fields have a restricted vocabulary-we use this function for fields such as "art movement", "category" etc.The help desk service is very good although expensive.We'll take it out for one more year because we want to set up an issue system. We are bar-coding all the slides (this gives us a unique number for the database record) but are still using manual issue.For anything which you have problems with the help desk will put together some software and send it to you on a floppy. You can then load it on to the database.Report writing/generating is easy. We print labels for the slides. We also send returns to DACS, listing the number of slides we have added to the collection under their scheme, with very little effort. Password control allows search only facility as well as search/edit. DB Textworks version 1 which we have is not year 2000 compliant. Rather than upgrade to version 2 we are going to wait for version 3 which will be available shortly. Hope this helps. Regards. Stephanie Silvester Sub Librarian Art & Design Coventry University