Bi‐lingual bibliographic software for processing library materials in the Arabic language

Bibliographic applications require special software capabilities if they are to provide the flexibility necessary for creating textual databases. Many specialised computer programs have been developed to facilitate bibliographic information processing. Saffady's survey of selected software in 1984 and a more recent survey carried out by Bridge in 1991 list more than 26 bibliographic application packages in use in different information agencies. However, not many programs are suitable for managing bi‐lingual applications, particularly in the processing of data in Arabic. Ashoor, Aman, and Salem have discussed in detail the problems of absence of a unified code, limitations of data input and output, and other problems related to computer terminals which have affected the development of bi‐lingual software.