Message-Id: <mailto:199504181437.JAA14991@library.wustl.edu> Date: Tue, 18 Apr 1995 09:57:43 EDT From: mailto:IGribovsky@IDRC.CA> Subject: Re: Microsoft Access To: Multiple recipients of list IMAGELIB
In order to do what you propose, i.e. type in the first letter (or maybe first few letters, if you have several categories that start with the same letter) and have that term automatically entered requires a "module" written in Access Basic. Although I have been learning increasingly more about this over the past year or so, it was still a computer consulting company that originally set this function (actually, several functions or modules or subroutines are required to do the whole job) up for us.
The Basics (pardon the pun)? Well, first off you need to enter a Table of all the different indexing terms you want to use -- depending on how many you have, you may want to do this electronically (we have over 4000 indexing terms and we gave these on diskette to the consultants). Next, it's good to have a "pop-up" Form (here, you need a Button and a Macro to activate it to do the popping-up on demand) that lets you do the data entry. From here, my knowledge gets more sketchy: I DO know that you need a Module to check the few letters that you type in, search for the term that you want, and then assign it to your record (this basically links the unique number each indexing term is automatically assigned by the system to the unique number each record is automatically assigned by the system).
With our system, we also have a Table that shows all these record-to-indexing term links (i.e. record 100 contains links to indexing terms 23, 45, 67, and 111). Whether this Table is generated automatically (I don't think so) or was set up by the programmer (more likely), I am not sure...0
If you have any more specific questions, I'd be happy to check our system's Modules more carefully and answer you to the best of my abilities...
Cheers,
Rina Gribovsky International Development Research Centre Librarian, A/V Resources 250 Albert Ottawa, Ontario
Email: mailto:igribovsky@idrc.ca Phone: (613) 236-6163, ext. 2063