----------------------------Original message---------------------------- Bill, I'm not sure if you are asking for a specific database product. You will see reference to GEODEX on Maps-L. It was developed by Christopher Baruth. If you are looking for something to help you learn Marc record format, one possible resource, is MitiNet Marc. My contact person was in California: Jeff Epstein at 1-800-824-6272. Jeff sent me a perusal copy of the software and I was very impressed. I found that it had only one deficiency (but major for our purposes). It is intended to help library folk who needed to learn and use Marc. Most of those in its intended audience are non-MLS people, but I think MLS people who need to build Marc record skills would find it useful. MitiNet Marc leads you through a Marc record field by field using either the numbers (so loved by catalogers who speak Marc fluently) or by using Mnemonic labels. You can choose which of these you want and can flip back and forth if you want. It also allows the setting of an example of each field to let you know what sort of information goes there. This is a VERY cursory statement of its power. There are many things I found which make it easy to recommend. Jeff told me earlier this spring, in a follow-up call, that the deficiency -- not supporting the full ALA character set -- would be taken care of in the release scheduled for August 1993. The characters which might most concern you with this are the prime, and double prime which are the standards for map coordinates' minutes and seconds. I don't now recall if it supported the superscript 0 which is used for the degree symbol. (Our other need was for transliterated Middle Eastern languages which use several diacritic characters). Our primary interest was for our part-time students (i.e. NO MLS) to use for doing retrospective conversion of manual bibliographic records. We were also interested in it to help new paraprofessional staff learn the tagging and coding rules needed for our library's level of bibliographic record entry. If you want to look at it, give Jeff a call. Debra Lords [log in to unmask] Marriott Library University of Utah Salt Lake City, Utah 84112