A computerised accounts system at the city university

Abstract

For the past two years The City University Library has kept a detailed manual record of its internal accounts. The records included details of order estimates and of invoice totals for books, journals, binding and miscellaneous items, and the latter group was subdivided further into totals for photocopying, inter‐library loans, etc. In addition, estimates of expenditure on items recommended by each of eleven teaching departments were maintained against notional allocations in the total library book grant. Records of actual expenditure of departmental requests were not kept as in practice it was found that the estimates were sufficiently accurate for reporting on progress in spending the allocations. Despite a considerable amount of routine clerical effort there were limits to the amount of information that could be obtained from these records. For instance there was no separate listing of orders, or of invoice totals, relating to an individual bookseller.

Citation

Stevenson, C.L. and Cooper, J.A. (1968), "A computerised accounts system at the city university", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 2 No. 1, pp. 15-29. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb046583