DEVADASON (FJ). Proposal for a Common Exchange/Communication Format: Opinion Paper on Standardization of Machine Readable Bibliographic Record. 5,1;1980; 52-75
The international organisation for standardization developed its standard, ISO : 2709- 1973 which formed the basis for the development of several machine readable bibliographic record formats. These formats were developed to control the variable nature of the bibliographic data elements and the record. But comparative study of different formats revealed the fact that the bibliographic data elements are to be standardized as to their choice and form of representation, in order to achieve compatibility among the different formats. Based on this factor, this paper outlines a format giving much importance to the data elements and their constituents, with unique identification for each of the constituents following a tagging scheme. A model format for the bibliographic description of simple monographs is presented as illustration which reflect a singly linked list structure, each preceding tag of a data element having a field giving the length of the associated data element, which serves as a pointer to the beginning of the succeeding tag and its association data element. In particular it is pointed out that, schedules of all the fundamental constituent data elements for each type of document, structured like a classification scheme or the systematic part of a thesaurus, reflecting the coordinate, subordinate, super ordinate and collaboral relationship among the data elements are to be drawn up. In designing these schedules care must be taken in arriving at the fundamental constituent data elements to form data element sets according to the requirements of other formats. Using these schedules if a format as suggested is developed, then almost any other format could be generated out of it almost in a mechanical way, rendering this format a universal exchange format or a switching format.
DEVADASON (FJ). Data and Date Base Systems: Computers in Data Handling. 5,2;1980; 156-67
Describes scientific data as a crystallised presentation of the essence of scientific knowledge in the most accurate form. Considers extraction, the analysis and evaluation of these data and their dissemination as an important activity for the information scientist. Describes how scientific data differ from bibliographic data. Emphasizes that scientific data must be current, its accuracy level must be known, the unit of measurement, the method of determination etc., must be indicated and there should be facilities for further processing of data to generate various forms of the data to form answer to specific queries. Suggests that computers could be used very effectively for data handling and numeric database systems could be set up using computers. Points out that even minicomputers with certain hardware and software facilities could be used for setting up efficient numeric data base systems. Mentions several numeric data bases and data centres which are rendering data service using various computer configurations, using different software packages. Describes a typical data system as consisting of interatomic potential data having an efficient interactive search system for searching its data base. Mentions that use of computers in data handling will revolutionise information systems and services.