Do Not Fold; 12

Do not then staple or mutilate this car. The slogan of the computer a University of Illinois radio service presents a series of programs about you and the computer from banks to hospitals and from airlines to music. It's application in this team and these programs will give you a glimpse of these countless applications and what they mean to you. Do not follow a warning previously applied to prized possessions of a local library. Now refers to the cards used by computers in those libraries. Memories of pleasant summer evenings spent with a good book made at the crossroads with the computer age children in search of another Winnie the Pooh book and adults looking for research materials on wildlife or southwestern Arizona can expect expanded service from tomorrow's libraries because of computers.

The thousands of volumes located in dusty dark stacks of libraries may soon be more accessible to the average citizen. The concept of information retrieval is the key mans knowledge is deposited in the books that he writes within the walls of a library sits this gathered information. But how can an individual find the particular book or the particular fact that he seeks. At the present time he goes to a card catalogue and looks in an alphabetical file arranged by author title and subject. Usually he finds a suitable reference but sometimes he misses an important book on the topic and only learns about it later indirectly. This process is far from dependable and librarians worry about the growing volume it must handle the files of card catalogs may also be placed in a computer's memory. Access to these files is quick and efficient. A greater value may be handled. However in order to set up information retrieval by computer man must understand the essence of his filing process. You must analyze all of the cross references and double meanings of

words before his system will be successful and he must consider the necessity of computers to perform other functions of the library in an integrated system. The first task of the library is acquisition. I don't recent conference Donald the black member of the staff of the library and documentation systems department and the System Development Corporation talked about this task. It went from there to a system being incorporated into all seven California libraries. Mr. Black outlined how this project began and what difficulties were encountered. We wanted to do something that would really be useful to libraries and that we

would be economic for them to use also. We felt very very certain that technically speaking we could develop a system which would allow libraries to do a number of things. But we we still are not sure that libraries can afford it at least. Smaller libraries perhaps large well-financed libraries. May well be able to afford it where the smaller ones can't. But we're in the process of determining Yes. And the first area. That we decided to work in with the libraries was that of acquisitions and library jargon that's buying books. This is not as simple as it sounds because not all publishers are. As easy to deal with as some of the very large ones that everyone is aware of. Many publishers advertise very little. Some of them don't

have good distribution facilities. There are lots of books published in foreign countries in exotic languages and libraries are interested in everything that's that's published. So there are many tricks to the acquisitions business. In addition some of the academic libraries such as University of Illinois might be when they have many many different funds from which they purchase these materials so there's a tremendous job of fund accounting. That they have to carry on. Again once you place an order there is no assurance that it's going to come in automatically without some problem and there has to be means of following up to ensure that you really do get what you what you ordered. Mr. Black then explain specifically how such an acquisition system would work how particular book could be acquired by the library. If an individual wanted to order some

books let's say to make things reasonably simple let's say these are contemporary English language books and they're in print. That is the publisher has a mini stock and you don't have to go to an out of print dealer. If you would sit down at the terminal and you would go through a procedure which would have been a 5. You to the computer. Now anyone anyone who had a a terminal on a telephone line without some kind of formal identification could use a computer and that has to be prevented obviously. So there's this logging procedure and then once you have done that you tell the computer simply that you want to that your you're part of this library system and we've called it lists standing for library information system time sharing. So the

user would input a code to log in and in the the word. For example load lists. This would tell a computer that it wants. You want to start that program. And then there's an affirmative response from the computer that says it's loaded and then you tell it go. Which means transfer control to the user program from this kind of executive level program. Then you and you would have several ways of identifying to the computer of the books you want to order. I mentioned getting the tapes from the Library of Congress now for if these tapes were in the file the Library of Congress has certain code numbers which identify trees and you could order a book simply by putting in the code number and if it were in the file then an order could be created with all the data. In other words you wouldn't have to put in author and title and so forth.

If you had that code number. Now if you don't have the code number you can simply put in author and title and that would be what you would do next. If you lack the code numbers you would put those in. So you can put a series of code numbers or a list of authors and titles and where there is confusion. Say in the works of Shakespeare there must be hundreds of editions and some of them are edited by the same man but different publishers. You know what you have to put in enough information to specify to the computer exactly what you want and if you can do it simply by author and title and that's all you have to put in that computer prepared order form could be completed with the aid of a computer and teletype under computer control to the publisher. But why handle these orders for books by such a method. Why not prepare them manually. Mr Black adds another justification for this course of action to the advantages of speed and efficiency.

It's not just the order that is prepared that makes it justifiable as I mentioned the ordering process especially for a very large library results in a number of very complex files and so the real real payoff comes from the maintenance of the files that the computer can undertake rather than the simple printing of a book order. You can keep track of everything you've ordered it can keep track of how much you have spent out of each budget and can tell you at any time how much you have left spin. I can tell you how many books on music you have purchased just for this year and things like that that librarians like to know and faculty and or in a public library that the board of trustees is interested in how the library is spending its money. After the books have been received by the library in question these publications must be

catalogued for ready access information such as subject title author called numbers of pages illustrations and brief descriptions must be entered in the library catalogue. For some time to come this process will first enter a manual stage at which people determine these listings. Final preparation of the card catalog however may be assigned to a computer. John P. Kennedy. Data Processing librarian at the Georgia Institute of Technology library in Atlanta is involved in a local branch of the marque project directed at catalog files of books acquired by libraries. Mr Kennedy explains what this project means. Mark stands for machine readable cataloguing and it runs a program on a project. At the Library of Congress to develop a system for making cataloguing a biblia graphic information available to others for the transmission of graphic information. So they

have done a great deal of work in developing a communications format for the records to be exchanged in order to test this work. They invited other libraries to participate as users of the information that they prepared. Sixteen libraries were chosen to be participants to receive the information from the Library of Congress in this communications format and to make use of it as they chose. Used it in many different ways. As I said we used it in our cataloguing operation. It can also be used in the ordering of works and I think in many many other ways the libraries were chosen on the basis of their experience in library automation. The computer facilities available to them are an attempt to get a geographical distribution with libraries from different parts of the country

and an attempt to get libraries of different types of academic public school government and state libraries are all represented in the User Group with files provided from other branches of the marque project preparation of cards by computer proceeds. Mr Kennedy explains why his library is committed to this approach. It's a little bit faster for us now we are saving some time. It's cheaper for us then the method we were using the cards done on the computer costing us about 10 cents each whereas we form a system of purchasing a Library of Congress cards and then manually with a typewriter typing in headings on them it was running about 17 cents a card. But the big benefit is in the future we're building this database that will have will provide us with the capability of doing many things that in the future transmitting live information about our holdings to other libraries. Printing the book

catalog and so on so the way our operational advantage is now but the big advantage is in having the machine readable database so that we can manipulate this data in many ways. Search through it different. Things but how does all this work behind the scenes affect the library user. For some years I don't think the user will be aware of a great many changes. There will be new tools available such as this book catalog that he can use in his office or in other locations that I think will be an aid. We will be able to also do for him certain things like giving him a list of languages a graduate student a list of. Journals or books and a language that he may be studying in his field it is difficult to do with our present card catalog as we look further into the future because we see the possibility of the student getting information from a display terminal in dormitory

or in an office or other location where he can make queries to the through the. Terminal to the database that is it available to the computer and receive answers to refine his question and perhaps eventually even receive the actual I don't know that he wants rather than just a reference to John Kennedy finds another advantage in catalog preparation by computer. He looks to the future of such projects. One of the biggest benefits for the libraries is going to be I think in the sharing of cataloguing effort. Usually a lot of areas have had to have done a lot more original cataloging than perhaps is reasonable. Elsie has not already catalog and catalogue an item when they get it they have felt that in order to get the book out to users quickly it's necessary to go

ahead and catalog it themselves so that you have very large numbers of catalogs around the country cataloguing the same item over and over when they don't get the data from Al C.. We think that the sort of project we're working in the Marc project will make it possible. For libraries to exchange cataloguing information with one another on a current basis. A more immediate basis so that if anybody anywhere in the country has catalogued the items other libraries will be able to get that cataloguing and save starting over on it themselves. The next step for computers and libraries is circulation once books have been acquired and catalog people will want to check out these books. One broadly based library which serves the entire state of Illinois has started the world's first online system of this

kind. The Illinois State Library in Springfield lends books to libraries and individuals across the state. Circulation of these books is maintained with the aid of a computer. This library has especially been designed for those who have no library service or able to obtain a particular publication locally. Robert E. Hamilton coordinator of technical services describes how it was staffed handles over 200 requests today by mail. And it's a dedicated computer and we use it right and just for the library it's not. Nobody else uses it. And we charge our books out on it we keep track of them. If a person doesn't send the books back why we sent an overdue notice even by the computer. So we use this as a facilitate to speed up the handling of our operation. Previously we had some 22 people operating our what we called a circulation records unit and this unit didn't

simply took the book as it after had been pulled off the shelf to be sent out. Made records but typed list. We go along with the book by all these lists and held them until the books came back. This was a manual system we had to insert cards back in the pockets of the books so we have eliminated this part of it through our computer system. We are only in the area of circulation control. We only worry about the book that is out of the library under the system not where all our books are at the present time. It is the person using this system aware that computers are behind the circulation of a book that he requested. Mr Hamilton observes Well they don't really the only hint he gets is that he gets a gets a punched card back as a library card so a little tiny stub card about. Well the average IBM card is 80 columns long Mliswa is about twenty two columns twenty two to twenty eight columns and on

and it has a number on it and that's all it has on it has a place for him to sign his name on the back. Now anybody that writes in they ask for a book we automatically give them a library card and we send the stub to themselves they come to Springfield walk in the library itself we think we can take care of them. I think the average user doesn't probably doesn't know that we're on a computer system until well they get a shot at that. If it's a person that receives their books by mail all the time they get what we call a shipping list it's mail with the books and it tells the booklets in the box or in the packaging when it's due back at the library. Outside of this they don't know a lot they can tell by the printing that it is a computer printout because it's all in capital letters and this type of thing. I think that probably we are on day two two days faster and I got a leverage than we were say

a year and a half two years ago. We try right now to have Mondays all of Monday shipment in the mail by Tuesday evening and it used to be it was as late as Thursday so this is the type of thing. Generally our collections of books or groups of books that are trying to fill requests during the morning hours are all in the mail by 4:00 and a half that afternoon and are sometimes three people working on some of the real sticky ones in the next day. Finally there's the aspect of research to consider. Librarians hope that bibliographies first subjects may be obtained quickly and that all available material will be included in any list for a specific topic manual preparation of bibliography

seems a waste of time. Weeks may be spent on a particular bibliography which will be used once. Why can a computer take on this task. The Emory clearinghouse system with 18 branches across the United States has based his existence upon this concept. Brian Carr's director of an Emory clearinghouse in Urbana Illinois keeps an up to date file of materials about education of the child from birth to age 8. Dr. Karr's describes the kinds of publications which are a part of this vast file these documents that we get I'm not the normal published documents at all. In fact our charge is not to go after documents that have appeared in journals. We've already published an overlong I.D. available to people. We're after the ephemeral kind of material. When a person gives a speech and a transcription is made that is very important and it is an indication of. His interest and his work in the field. And

yet it is not catalogued and made available. People are not aware of it. There are many reports given at annual meetings and these two tend to just get away from the feel that there is no point in inventing the wheel over and over and over again it's it's this duplication of research effort that that route triggered the concept as we know it and the other point that reinforced all this was that the federal government had been pouring millions of dollars into research and yet there was actually no evidence that this research was getting into the hands of people who could use it. So they wanted to develop a channel to at least make this possible. The Arak system is helping to bridge or at least develop this channel rather region. Now what

happened is we talk about processing a document run a document will come in the front door. We solicit it. You have to send people to meetings. If they contact the speakers and say Can I have a transcription of your speech you're going to have a pre-print of it. All they will get a transcription of it somehow or other we acquire documents and we have a massive acquisitions program and it's been many many faceted. The document is logged into the clearinghouse we know the title and the author. We copy down other descriptive information such as the institution it originated at. Then we begin processing seriously. Now we begin we have people who are in the clearing house who read the documents who write I call it a resume rather than an abstract and then select from it Terminus were descriptive terms or indexing

terms which can be used for retrieval of a document in a computer system. The aim already in these with these indexing descriptive terms is to be able to retrieve that document. You want a combination. But what you may also give back and you hope is to give back all the documents that are very highly related to it. This project is related to a specific area of study preschool education. Again this format be applied broadly to documents in other subjects. The only thing that is standard of course is the format. I always sort of curl people's hair when I say wow I'm not really too interested in what the document is about because I look upon it as a document. It contains information it may be that it's dealing with early childhood. On the other hand it may be good dealing with re-entry

characteristics of a spaceship. It doesn't make any difference you can still read it. The whole system would be directly applicable in exactly the same way. Now of course the space agency does have its own information retrieval system and there are what five major clearing houses. Dr. Carr's considers this area clearing house and its long term value in comparison with libraries in general. He looks into the basic concept of the library the library as we know them I don't think I really set up for four users. I think they're set up for librarians as a place to go work in. And if you take note of the kinds of questions that people ask they don't know the title of a document they don't even know the author sometimes they walk in and we have this quite often and they say I've always known a fellow working in Penn State on preschool education.

You know I think he's doing something with academic achievement. Oh right oh already in just that very you know informal discussion we have three entries into what he what he whines. But you do this into a library and you don't get anywhere. I don't know all the observation of Dr. Carr's demonstrate part of the picture of the library in the computer age. Dr Robert Hayes director of the Institute of library research at the University of California at Los Angeles also has some observations about the future library and its appearance to the average citizen. Mechanisation is coming to libraries will be there. Over this 10 to 15 year period. The Professor. Or student. Will probably see the following changes. Or maybe I do. It's. No basic change in the way the library

functions. You're not going to have an online catalog. This is not right. With you know console isn't stupid. Stormy Tory Foster's office. There will be such consequence but they'll communicate to the campus computer. But what will happen is that the professor or the student. Will go to the library and say I need the following data. Can you provide it to me. On the campus computer. So that I can use it. The library will say yes we have those tapes to be able to provide them to you. Put it in the online store on Wednesday. This being Monday. And. Notify you when it is there and available for you to use. And you get whatever you want to do with. The library will also be able to produce specialized catalogs.

So that the professor can have in his office a catalog of the holdings and to find areas of his interest he will receive monthly or bi weekly routes appropriate notification for not only new additions to the library but new additions in his field from other sources. But what of the present. How will computers play a role in today's libraries. Dr. Hayes a jester review of the entire concept of the library in our society today it has been said. That. To mechanize an existing operation. Would be like putting wheels on a horse. Or. Comparable analogies. And that what one really should do if you're going to mechanize in business in education or in the library. Is to examine not the way we're presently doing things but the way

in some sense the way it ought to be done. And that involves an examination of what is it we are really trying to do. And so adopting this approach we should then ask the question. What are we really trying to do in the library. And I understand that completely. What is what is the library functioning for. And then having determined that. How could we best school about doing. That might turn out to be the way we're doing it now. But the belief of people that say this is it will be something quite different. Do not provide the tools for today's libraries and a guideline

into the libraries of tomorrow. Acquisition cataloguing circulation and bibliography preparation all receive the helping hand of the computer on the next programme in a series transistorized artist to help paint and compose a symphony. Computers enter the world of art and approach the level of creation each week the University of Illinois radio service brings you a new meaning behind the slogan of the computer age. Do not bend staple or mutilate this card. This program was distributed by the national educational radio network.