PT Journal Index - more

[Don]

Hi John Baird,

A very simple solution to the database quandry would be to use one of the
many *shareware* databases programs. I personally use file express, but as
I said this is only one of many. Most shareware is intended to be *user*
friend. In this particular cases File Express is one hundred percent menu
driven.


At 01:02 AM 5/4/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Dear List,
>
>A short recap...then more background on the Frank Emerson Index.
>
>The Frank Emerson Index that I will be demonstrating at the Cybercafe in
>Providence is a - huge - resource! This a periodical index of 13,675
>articles of interest to piano technicians from 31 journals. All but
>about 300 of those are from either our former journal, The Piano
>Technician (May 1946 to Dec 1957), or our current journal, Piano
>Technicians Journal (Jan 1958 to the current issue). This index is the
>result of many years of effort by Frank Emerson, RPT. He has graciously
>turned his index over to PTG.
>
>The ECC's plan is to include this index on the CD-ROM of 15 years of
>Journal articles (with the passage of time maybe that’s grown to 16
>years now<g>). It could also be distributed on diskette. In zipped form
>the database file is .5MB in size. This then unzips into a 4.5MB file.
>Frank's wish is that his index will be helpful to the committee and to
>the rest of PTG, and his one request is that it be available only to the
>membership. It's a .dbf file that can be imported to all kinds of
>programs like MS Access, File Maker Pro, etc. Question: How many in the
>general membership know how to use a database? Maybe Bill Ballard is
>right that most people would be happy enough doing text searches with a
>word processor.
>
>Since Frank Emerson discontinued maintaining the database in May 1995, I
>have been working with it, doing such things as deleting duplicate
>records, merging the small index that the Home Office maintains for its
>purposes, modifying the structure, updating, etc. 
>
>The Home Office index has recently started omitting such Journal
>features as Steve Brady's book reviews and comments in Editorial
>Perspective, the President's Message, and death notices in Passages.
>Frank was diligent about including all this stuff. Having this material
>may not be of much interest to those looking only for technical
>information, but it does make other kinds of research possible. These
>recent omissions may not matter as much when we have the complete 16
>years of Journals on a searchable CD. On the other hand, I don't know
>yet if the search and report functions of the PDF file on a CD-ROM are
>as flexible as what you can do with a database file.
>
>Each record in the database has eight fields that can be searched:
>KEYWORDS, AUTHOR, TITLE, PUBLICATION, MONTH, PAGE, SERIES, AND CATEGORY.
>The KEYWORDS field is especially useful. If you were searching for
>information on "touchweight", for instance, you may miss some articles
>by searching only on the TITLE field, since the term "touchweight" does
>not necessarily appear in the title of all the articles which deal with
>that subject. However, a search on the KEYWORDS field will result in
>more "finds".
>
>John Baird, Member
>PTG Electronic Communications Committee
>
>
Regards, Don