Variable labels and value labels

Hi All,

I am using R for social sciences. In this field I am used to use short
variable names like "q1" for question 1, "q2" for question 2 and so on and
label the variables like q1 : "Please tell us your age" or q2 : "Could you
state us your household income?" or something similar indicating which
question is stored in the variable.

Similar I am used to label values like 1: "Less than 18 years", 2 : "18 to
30 years", 3 : "31 to 60 years" and 4 : "61 years and more".

I know that the packages Hmisc and memisc have a functionality for this
but these labeling functions are limited to the packages they were defined
for. Using the question tests as variable names is possible but very
inconvenient.

I there another way for labeling variables and values in R?

Kind regards

Georg Maubach