Search results

VINE is a Very Informal Newsletter produced three times a year by the Information Officer for Library Automation and financed by the British Library Research & Development Department. It is issued free of charge on request to interested librarians, systems staff and library college lecturers. VINE'S objective is to provide an up‐to‐date picture of work being done in U.K. library automation which has not been reported elsewhere.

An analysis of library use studies previously published by this author (Kilgour 1989) revealed that of every hundred user requests for a book, seven are not satisfied because the library has not acquired the book, eleven because there is a defect in the catalog or error in its use (3.45 to deficiency and 7.55 to user error), and twenty‐three because the book is not on the shelf. This paper demonstrates types of online catalog access that can reduce the failures caused by card catalog flaws or by user search errors by half.

Reviews the development of cataloging in the Acquisitions‐Catalog‐Classification Department of the University of Haifa Library against the technological changes that have taken place throughout the world. These changes have strengthened the basic assumption that maximum use should be made of the bibliographic information available from other libraries in Israel and abroad for the university library to become part of the international bibliographic system and in order to save resources. The various stages of the work process are analysed and the role of MARC explained.

The findings of a survey of Scottish university, central institution and college of education libraries to assess present and planned subject access to their catalogues and whether online catalogues are likely to improve subject access are reported. The results are analysed and the findings discussed in relation to published studies of subject access in online catalogues. It is concluded that greater attention needs to be paid to subject access both by librarians in specifying automated systems and by system suppliers in responding to specifications.

The purpose of this paper is to present the ways in which online cataloguing is used to provide twenty-first century library and information services to a university community in a developing country, together with the challenges and prospects of such an application. The paper aims to examine the use of the internet to catalogue and classify library materials in the University of Ilorin Library. It looks at the use of the Library of Congress Catalogue in copy cataloguing. This paper also discusses the use of Koha, a free library integrated software to classify and catalogue library resources in the University of Ilorin Library.

The methods used are participant observation, interviews with the senior librarians in the library and visits to another library that uses Koha software. Periodical and online articles were also used to gather information to support this study.

The major problem is incessant power failure and the library is planning to get a heavy and very powerful inverter and generator that can stop the disruption of work resulting from the intermittent power supply. Another setback in using Koha is that the cataloguing is being done online unlike Biblofile which is done offline.

The researchers visited only one university library in the course of the research. This is due to financial constraints.

Information communication technology training must be taken seriously for librarians who want to remain relevant in this age of information technology.

This study about Koha software usage is the first of its kind to be carried out in the University of Ilorin Library and will be useful to other university libraries.

Deeni Madaris of Pakistan and their libraries are playing an important role in educating the large fraction of society. They have always been engaged in the development of social and cultural values of the Pakistani society. This study aims to investigate the organization of information resources and their utilization at Deeni Madaris libraries in the central Punjab, Pakistan.

Quantitative research approach was adopted for this study. A questionnaire was developed on the bases of related literature and discussions with experts of librarianship as well as Islamic studies in Pakistan. The questionnaire was sent to 49 Deeni Madaris, of which five did not have libraries and four did not respond. Forty (81.6 per cent) Deeni Madaris responded and provided the relevant data about their libraries. The collected data were analyzed through SPSS 22. Mostly descriptive statistics were applied to calculate the frequencies, percentage, means and standard deviations. A two-tailed t-test was applied to check the impact of cataloguing and automation on the use of information resources.

It was found that majority of the respondents developed their own classification and cataloguing methods for the organization of information resources and did not have a proper retrieval system. Majority of the respondents were providing lending services to readers. Teachers and final-year students were the key users of the libraries. They mostly referred to books, theses and serials written in Urdu and Arabic language. The situation of library computerization was very weak; only 19 libraries had computers and 11 of them have partially automated the library activities. Library automation and catalogue put positive effects on the use of library resources.

The exploration of the literature showed that libraries of Madaris in Pakistan have always been a priority, but these libraries did not get a position in the library literature as they deserve. This study will fill this gap.

The application of new technology to Scandinavian libraries has not differed greatly from country to country, except for Iceland, where library automation was introduced later. The Nordic Council for Scientific Information and Research Libraries (NORDINFO) has actively encouraged interlibrary co‐operation at both national and international level. Chief amongst such initiatives has been the National Technological Library of Denmark's computerized location and on‐line ordering system ALIS. Many libraries now make their holdings available on‐line. Scandinavian libraries receive 50% of their international loans from BLDSC, and take advantage wherever possible of its technological facilities for automated request transmission. If system interface were improved, the existing DOCLINE link between Chalmers University Library, TIB and BLDSC could be extended in scope. New technology is increasing library co‐operation across Scandinavia.

This paper describes some tools that were written to help with the conversion of the card catalogue of a collection of cartoon drawings into an online catalogue. The tools described are an input program and a pair of special purpose editors that are used for checking and correcting the newly input catalogue records. The first of the editors is screen based but the second editor runs on a Sun workstation and has a user interface that uses the workstation's mouse and graphics. Also described is a graphical authority file editor that is integrated with the workstation editor.

Following a brief history of cataloguing and the MARC format this paper describes current challenges in developing suitable international formats and cataloguing rules for dealing with electronic resources. Extensive references to the past and current literature provide an overview of the problems faced.

The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Library offers a full range of library and information services to the Society's 42,000 members and the chemical community as a whole. Computers were first used in the Library in 1977 for online searching. In 1987, the cataloguing and circulation modules of the Data Trek automated library management system were installed and in mid‐1988 a Novell network with four workstations was set up. By mid‐1989, an OPAC was in place and the card catalogue was only used for pre‐1986 items. In 1990, serials management and acquisitions modules together with three more workstations were added to the network; a CD‐ROM player was also installed. The paper gives details of this and related development work and also how a total file server disc crash was dealt with in early 1991.