----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Hello Mr. Fieber, We use GEODEX in our Map Library, so I'll try to answer a few of your questions. While I have not used it for the Miscellaneous Investigations Series, I have set it up for our hydrographic charts which as you know have very irregular boundaries and varying scales. We have about six files in order to deal with the scales. It is ideal for us as we have such a mixture of sheets from international agencies that it was impossible to acquire paper catalogues to show what we had. This way we are able to enter coordinates for an area of which we want to find charts that would include it. We also use it for our current Canadian hydrographic charts, though more as an inventory control or holdings card, as the paper indexes are pretty good for these. The sheet names are indexed, if you set it up properly. You have two searchable fields which we usually do as sheet number and sheet name, order depending upon which is usually the first choice in searching. I find that sheet names may not always be easy to look for because we usually don't have them to begin a search. Print-outs may be sorted on either of these fields, plus computer record number and coordinates. I'm not sure about upper limits. We are currently housing our records on a 286 with who knows what else and a 386 with a good sized hard disc. We are also using the American Geographical Society records for the Canadian 1:50 000 topographic maps, which have about 20,000 records in two files (one is over 8,000 and the other is over 13,000) to which we are adding as we reconcile their records to ours. The hydrographic charts of Canadian areas have about 1,500 records in 4 files while the non-Canadian are about 800 in 2 files. The Canadian 1:500 000 topographic maps have 648 records. Hope that this will give you some ideas about how to use GEODEX. Alberta |===========================================================================| |Alberta Auringer Wood, Map Librarian, Memorial University of Newfoundland, | |St. John's, Newfoundland, CANADA A1B 3Y1. phone: 709-737-8892; | | fax: 709-737-2153; Internet: [log in to unmask] | |===========================================================================|