Rpbert, Jane, and all, This is where relational tables come into play. One table for the reference, with an ID number unique to each article or book. E.g., Bulbs, Revised; John Bryan, Ed.; REFID=1 The Lachenalia Handbook; by Graham Duncan; REFID=2 One table for each unique taxon, where there is a record for each time a given taxon is listed in a reference: Scadoxus membranaceus REFID=1 Lachenalia pusilla REFID=1 Lachenalia bachmannii REFID=1 Lachenalia pusilla REFID=2 Lachenalia bachmannii REFID=2 If you see the point..... Jim Shields At 10:07 PM 10/25/2003 -0700, you wrote: >Dear Jane, Jim and All; > >I am no great lover of spreadsheets and databases but I wanted to explain >my point. As a bibliography to a book I like very much the author title >format. But as a stand alone piece what good is it? If you are just >interested in authors it is great, but most of us want some information >about a particular bulb species. If one looks at most scientific journals >today, they have at the beginning of each article a list of keywords. If >one placed these three or four words in searchable fields, then one could >still present the author title information but have a way of searching the >data for special topics. This works for short papers. But what about >Floras and the like. You would have to have a field for every species >listed to be of value. Of course that would be great. I can imagine how >nice it would be if one could enter a species name and bring up all the >literature that related to that species. Unfortunately that would be a >huge task. But as I explained before a simple list of > authors-date-titles would soon get out of hand and be of little value. I > can provide such a list of over a thousand works relating to Iris but of > what value is it. As it stands as part of the Encyclopedia of Iris it > notes where information in that work comes from. But using it to work > backwards would not be very productive unless one wanted to repeat the > ten years of research I have just completed, >_______________________________________________ >pbs mailing list >pbs@lists.ibiblio.org >http://www.pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php ************************************************* Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd. P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/ Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 or toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA Member of INTERNATIONAL CLIVIA CO-OP