I have had a few data files come across my desk where the opening lines
contain the format. These may be comma, tab, space or character delimited
or SDF with lots of open territory, but at least they show the format in
the first line. I seem to recall that you can get dBase to output files
with format headers like this, but have never tried. I have imported
files into Lotus and created the header line for parsing the records, but
it's not always successful.

Do we have any idea how many databases there are of collections, in
contrast to the rollographies such as the Welte mentioned?

Karl Petersen¶
Meridian, Idaho

 [ Good question, Karl.  We've been talking of both "Inventory"
 [ and "Rollography" data.  Could the members with their collection
 [ inventoried in a computer file step forward?  Tell us what you think
 [ is important data to record!  -- Robbie