GIS can not only be used to convert databases to maps, it can also convert spatial data to databases.

My first GIS job was also in data entry. Me and three other people created the computerized base map of Charlotte County, Florida, my first job after I left California.

All the Mylar plat sheets for the County were scanned, and the imagery then flashed up on screens (HP Unix workstations), where we used the GIS "heads up digitizing software" to enter and identify every single point, vector and polygon which had been originally created by draftsmen with pen and ink. It was highly accurate survey data, benchmarks, property boundaries and rights-of-way, so when it was all put together it made a consistent electronic cadastral (legal for property demarcation) map of the entire county. This base map then became the single unified coordinate system upon which any subsequent cartography or imagery in Charlotte was rubbersheeted over.

Going from hot-shot Silicon Valley remote sensing engineer to data entry clerk can do funny things to your head. I eventually left that job to become Broward County's first GIS manager.

It took us about 3 years to digitize those Mylars. And I haven't been the same since.