Columns

Abstract

This book by Rod Cowley — ALS: A Guide for Librarians and System Managers — plunges me into some perplexity. For what is the object of this series of which we seem to have here the first volume? According to the back cover, it is to help librarians or system managers — a frightful term. I do hope that the “managers” are also librarians and not upper echelon bureaucrats with their eyes firmly fixed on the statistics produced by computers. However, the book seeks to help them choose an automated system by examining the different products now available. A good move, for librarians wishing to automate their systems often have great difficulty in making a choice in the face of commercial‐cum‐technical engineers well versed in the techniques of salesmanship. Often there is a risky choice — that of one system rather than another based on hazardous rule of thumb and word of mouth. This indicates the potential value of a series which should enable us to form an opinion of different systems by an analysis of their strengths and weaknesses. Rod Cowley is a former assistant librarian at Bromley Public Library which has an ALS system and former Secretary of the ALS Users Group. Today, he is UK Sales Manager of Automated Library Systems Ltd.

Citation

Bérard, R., Cheshire, D.F., Day, S., Bunch, A. and Fleming, E. (1989), "Columns", New Library World, Vol. 90 No. 3, pp. 46-53. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb038773