Art has added some great comments about xml and database mapping and has volunteered to do some work for us. It'd be good for interested developers to take a look at what he wrote (and the pointers to further information): http://usrlib.info/comments/2003/4/18/121844/847?pid=6#8 btw, he closed with the following: "Anyway, let me repeat that you and the rest of the koha folks are doing amazing work, it helps all of us when you show OSS is a valid option for even the trickiest of library systems." congrats to all of you. -pate Pat Eyler Kaitiaki/manager migrant Linux sys admin the Koha project ruby, shell, and perl geek http://www.koha.org http://pate.eylerfamily.org