Today I read an interesting story in Deccan Chronicle Hyderabad Edition. (DC Hyderabad 24/5/2014 p17 & 19) titled: "Number crunchers" on a software company called Modak Analytics. They have analyzed a large database of 81.4 crores of Indian Voters (18 terabytes) and have helped a leading political party to win polls. Our interest, as librarians, arises out of their finding (one minor revelation) that the name Srinivas has been spelt in 600 different ways. As persons handling authors in our databases (involving problems due to variant spelling), their work is interesting. http://epaper.deccanchronicle.com/articledetailpage.aspx?id=533139 Many of current library databases and retrieval software provide for some kind of retrieval via Soundex Code. How effective are these? Dr P Vyasamoorthy President: Society for Serving Seniors 30 Gruhalakshmi Colony, Secunderabad 500015. LL 040-27846631 / Mobile: 9490804278 -- This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by MailScanner, and is believed to be clean.