Brief History Of Library Automation 19301996 Essay

Brief History Of Library Automation 1930-1996 Essay, Research Paper

Brief History of Library Automation: 1930-1996An automated library is one where a computer system is used tomanage one or several of the library’s key functions such asacquisitions, serials control, cataloging, circulation and the publicaccess catalog. When exploring the history of library automation, itis possible to return to past centuries when visionaries well beforethe computer age created devices to assist with their book lendingsystems. Even as far back as 1588, the invention of the French “BookWheel” allowed scholars to rotate between books by stepping on a pedalthat turned a book table. Another interesting example was the “BookIndicator”, developed by Albert Cotgreave in 1863. It housed miniaturebooks to represent books in the library’s collection. The miniaturebooks were part of a design that made it possible to determine if abook was in, out or overdue. These and many more examples of earlyingenuity in library systems exist, however, this paper will focus onthe more recent computer automation beginning in the early twentiethcentury. The Beginnings of Library Automation: 1930-1960It could be said that library automation development began in the1930’s when punch card equipment was implemented for use in librarycirculation and acquisitions. During the 30’s and early 40’s progresson computer systems was slow which is not surprising, given theDepression and World War II. In 1945, Vannevar Bush envisioned anautomated system that would store information, including books,personal records and articles. Bush(1945) wrote about a hypothetical”memex” system which he described as a mechanical library that wouldallow a user to view stored information from several different accesspoints and look at several items simultaneously. His ideas are wellknown as the basis for hypertext and mputers for their operations. Thefirst appeared at MIT, in 1957, with the development of COMIT,managing linguistic computations, natural language and the ability tosearch for a particular string of information. Librarians then movedbeyond a vision or idea for the use of computers, given thetechnology, they were able make great advances in the use of computersfor library systems. This lead to an explosion of library automationin the 60’s and 70’s. Library Automation Officially is Underway: 1960-1980The advancement of technology lead to increases in the use ofcomputers in libraries. In 1961, a significant invention by bothRobert Noyce of Intel and Jack Kirby of Texas Instruments, workingindependently, was the integrated circuit. All the components of anelectronic circuit were placed onto a single “chip” of silicon. Thisinvention of the integrated circuit and newly developed disk and tapestorage devices gave computers the speed, storage and ability neededfor on-line interactive processing and telecommunications. The new potential for computer use guided one librarian to develop anew indexing technique. HP. Luhn, in 1961, used a computer to producethe “keyword in context” or KWIC index for articles appearing inChemical Abstracts. Although keyword indexing was not new, it wasfound to be very suitable for the computer as it was inexpensive andit presented multiple access points. Through the use of Luhn’s keywordindexing, it was found that librarians had the ability to putcontrolled language index terms on the computer. By the mid-60’s, computers were being used for the production ofmachine readable catalog records by the Library of Congress. Between1965 and 1968, LOC began the MARC I project, followed quickly by MARCII. MARC was designed as way of “tagging” bibliographic records using3-digit numbers to identify fields. For example, a tag might indicate”ISBN,” while another tag indicates “publication date,” and yetanother indicates “Library of Congress subject headings” and so on. In1974, the MARC II format became the basis of a standard incorporatedby NISO (National Information Standards Organization). This was asignificant development because the standards created meant that abibliographic record could be read and transferred by the computerbetween different library systems. ARPANET, a network established by the Defense Advanced ResearchProjects Agency in 1969 brought into existence the use of e-mail,telnet and ftp. By 1980, a sub-net of ARPANET made MELVYL, theUniversity of California s on-line public access catalog, available ona national level. ARPANET, would become the prototype for othernetworks such as CSNET, BITNET, and EDUCOM. These networks have almostdisappeared with the evolution of ARPANET to NSFNET which has becomethe present day Internet. During the 1970’s the inventions of the integrated computer chipand storage devices caused the use of minicomputers and microcomputersto grow substantially. The use of commercial systems for searchingreference databases (such as DIALOG) began. BALLOTS (BibliographicalAutomation of Large Library Operations) in the late 1970’s was one ofthe first and later became the foundation for RLIN (the ResearchLibraries Information Network). BALLOTS was designed to integrateclosely with the technical processing functions of the library andcontained four main files: (1)MARC records from LOC; (2) an in-processfile containing information on items in the processing stage; (3) a

catalog data file containing an on-line record for each item; and (4)a reference file. Further, it contained a wide search retrievalc