Interface: Library Automation With Special Reference to Computing Activity

"Instead of sitting dragon-like upon their wordhoard, they [librarians] are called upon to become dispensers of 'information.' ('Information' is enjoying a vogue at the moment; combine it with 'scientist,' 'officer,' 'transfer,' and it becomes an even more potent talisman.)"

Unlike many studies of the subject, this collection of papers—edited by two distinguished British specialists in library automation—exhibits a rare irony and felicitous style. The book is divided into five sections. It opens with a review of library automation over the last five years and illustrates a variety of approaches to a library's "housekeeping operations"—ordering, accessioning, cataloguing, and circulation—with contributions from librarians of the Newcastle upon Tyne University Library, Bodleian Library, Birmingham, South-West Library Systems Cooperative Project, the British Museum, and Trinity College Library. These chapters focus not only on systems in operation at the institutions mentioned but also on parallels or analogues to them in United States libraries. Knowledgeable presentations are given, for example, of the Widener Library Shelflist Project, of the Baltimore County Public Library Computerized Catalogue, and of the University of Chicago Library Computation Program. Brief reference is also made to automated library systems in other countries. The employment of computers in British Public Libraries is scrutinized, and some attention is paid to developments on the publishers' side.

Methods and techniques are the subject of Section II, which emphasizes an introduction to computing methods for library information processing and system analysis in libraries. Section III takes up the question of centralized services and examines the ways in which machine-readable cataloguing both encourages and demands common approaches and centrally organized and administered resources. Management criteria in the design of systems for academic libraries are studied in Section IV, with particular attention to planning and evaluation. Section V—called "Tailpiece"—is a brief but comprehensive discussion of the future of library automation.