Abstract
The continuous increase in the use of data-base management systems (DBMS) has created a need for systematic methods in the choice of software. Selecting the most appropriate data-base management software for his special problems is quite a task for a person with little or no experience in using microcomputers in his work. Software producers and vendors have little awareness of the special requirements for handling large data bases containing textual fields, for example bibliographic files with abstracts. Some extra problems may be caused by Finnish special letters (å, ä, ö). In this paper, a universal method for evaluating software from the viewpoint of librarians and information specialists has been described. To make the selection task easier, the properties of the software packages have been presented in tables.