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“Groupware,” “groupwork,” “workgroup computing,” “computer‐supported cooperative work,” and “distributed processing” are buzzwords that refer to a new way in which personal computers are being used in offices. Personal computers hooked together into local area networks (LANs) represent the latest stage in the evolution of automated technology. Of the eleven million personal computers in business, over 950,000 are arranged in some sort of LAN set‐up. The future for this configuration of computers and workstations will grow enormously in the next few years. By 1991, a conservative estimate of 6.7 million computers will be linked together in LANs in the workplace.

Chadwyck‐Healey Announces the Patrologla Latina Database. The Patrologia Latina Database is a major text conversion and electronic publishing project. It is a complete machine‐readable edition of the classic nineteenth‐century collection of texts edited by the ecclesiastical publisher Jacques‐Paul Migne.

Considers what the NeXT computer can offer libraries as an alternative to conventional mainframe‐PC‐terminal systems for sorting, storing, and displaying bibliographic information. Discusses the NeXT computer hardware, software, the idea of a library workstation, and the promise of the Digital Librarian utility. Surmises that, despite criticisms of cost, NeXT offers the possibility of a transformation in the way bibliographic information is handled by both patrons and staff.

MacWorld Expo Report. With over 400 vendors filling some 1400 booths in San Francisco's Moscone Center and Brooks Hall and Civic Auditorium, MacWorld Expo clearly demonstrated that the Apple Macintosh had matured in its first half decade as a computing choice on its own grounds and as a vehicle to work with other computers. As usual, there were a number of hardware and software announcements but none as anticipated as those from Apple Computer. It was well known that Apple would describe at the Expo a new version of its most popular CPU, the Macintosh SE, thanks in large part to leaks at Apple that supplied page one copy for MacWeek in three consecutive issues before the Conference. Nevertheless, there was hope that in spite of these previews, Apple might start the year off with a huge surprise, describing the oft‐hinted and wished‐for laptop Mac, or a high‐end model utilizing erasable optical disk technology. There were no surprises from Apple, other than the obvious — that there will be a number of CPU options for the prospective Macintosh owner by the end of the calendar year.

Library Exemption added to Software Rental Bill in U.S. Senate. In last month's issue, I briefly mentioned the existence of U.S. Senate Bill 198, The Computer Soft‐ware Rental Amendments Act of 1989, introduced on January 25 by Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah. This Bill proposed in its original language to restrict the ren‐tal, leasing, or lending of computer software. I am happy to report that the library community responded to this potential restriction on their right to lend materials in any form; an exemption for non‐profit libraries will be included in a new version of the Bill. I think that it is appropriate to examine this issue in more detail as it is of interest to all computer users in libraries.

OOP, GUI, AND LIBRARY WORKSTATION SOFTWARE. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) recently awarded large grants to the University of California and Pennsylvania State University jointly to link the massive bibliographic databases of both institutions together, in spite of varying hardware platforms and geography. At the workstation level, the University of California will create interfaces based on DECwindows, a form of the X Windows interface. The online bibliographic systems of Berkeley and Perm State handle 200,000 to 300,000 requests per week, and currently run on an IBM 3090 in California and a DEC VAX 9000 system in Pennsylvania. This interest in bibliographic interfaces has grown rapidly in the last few years thanks to hardware developments putting more computing muscle on the desktop for librarians, their programmers, and ultimately their patrons. Recent manifestations of graphic interfaces have appeared in many libraries as HyperCard shells built as intermediaries to mainframe bibliographic software. This grant by DEC indicates that this sort of work on graphic interfaces in libraries and the system offices on campuses has not gone without notice by major vendors. With the recent explosion in the number of graphic interfaces, it is important to review these tools and their basis in object oriented programming (OOP).

RENOVATING APPLE: THE MACINTOSH IIFX AS EVIDENCE. Last month Apple released a new high‐end Macintosh, dubbed the IIfx, aimed squarely at the technical workstation market. Utilizing a 68030 processor speeding along at 40 MHz, the IIfx is competitive with products such as Sun Microsystems' Sparcstation. Are there clues to Apple's future plans with the Macintosh product line imbedded in the novelty of the IIfx, or is it an evolutionary extension of IIci, IIcx, and IIx into the realm of veritable workstations? More important, does the IIfx represent a new direction for Apple, in light of its turbulent history over the past six months? Let's examine some of these events and place the IIfx in context.

Thanks to the demands of technical and scientific users, personal computers and workstations are going through a phenomenal evolution in terms of performance. Third‐party vendors are leading the way in developing accelerators in the shape of coprocessors that push the speeds of commercially available CPUs into the range of more specialized and expensive workstations and minicomputers. YARC Systems, of Agoura Hills, CA, recently announced the availability of a new NuBus board, utilizing a Am29000 RISC chip operating at 67MHz. This product, appropriately called MacRageous, will produce a performance level on a Macintosh of 27 million instructions per second (MIPS). Tests at the University of Virginia have indicated that MacRageous outperforms IBM's System 6000 SuperStation, one of the fastest workstations currently on the market. Of course, a product such as MacRageous will require the development of customized applications to take full advantage of its horsepower. In anticipation, YARC will make available a full line of compilers and debuggers. MacRageous will be available for prices starting around $2,000.

Copyright Clouds Multimedia Prospects. Imagine a computer program that gives a fire department an edge in dealing with hazardous spills, toxic materials threatening life and property — where a quick and accurate response literally has consequences for thousands. This program stores information on thousands of chemicals from manuals and technical treatises. By selecting an icon of a map, an entire city comes up on the screen with details on the locations of schools, hospitals, and businesses. With another click of a mouse, the program calculates the direction of the plume from a leak and provides clues to arrest the accident and move citizens out of harm's way.

Reduced Instruction Set Computer (RISC) processors represent a different way to design a CPU for a workstation. They are not magical elixirs to supercharge a personal computer into a mainframe; rather, they are simply a different approach to handling information. RISC design has already affected the architecture of more traditional CISC (Complex Instruction Set Computer) processors and will continue to do so well into the next decade. Given the wealth of software written for CISC processors and the pau‐city of RISC shaped applications, combined with the usual lag in software development behind any hardware breakthrough, a full‐fledged RISC library workstation may not appear for some time. Nevertheless RISC has earned a great deal of attention since its practical birth at IBM in 1976 by John Cocke and its pursuit in academic circles at Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley in the early 1980s. Bom from the simple idea of devising a way to complete a computer instruction in a single cycle of a processor, RISC architecture has been called the de facto standard of the next decade for workstations by some and a mere fad by others. Will these chips replace CISC processors entirely? Will they have an impact on library workstations? And will they ever appear in one form or another in the Macintosh? With RISC processors available from MIPS Computer Systems, Motorola, and Sun, and RISC‐based computers produced by Apollo, Sun, Everex, Hewlett‐Packard, and others, RISC is certainly a harbinger of the future of processors in workstations. The market for RISC‐based worksta‐tions is heating up as some manufacturers — Sun, DEC, Data General to mention a few — battle for customers by lowering prices and raising performance.