Search results

Preparation of bibliographic data for the production of CD‐ROM public access catalogs (PACs) requires several services: merging records from various vendors or libraries, the elimination of duplicate records, the identification and decoding of holdings information, updating the database (often in an offline mode), and authority control. The nature of specific CD‐ROM catalogs affects the priorities for processing the database. For example, some systems exploit controlled vocabulary and cross references, making subject authority critical. Others provide powerful Boolean searching on key words derived from all parts of the bibliographic record; as a result, the need for quality control checks beyond those typically provided by library vendors is increased. This article identifies the services and processes offered by seven vendors that provide CD‐PACs and one vendor that processes MARC bibliographic databases.

Laser disk databases containing MARC records that can be retrieved, edited, and used to print cards and labels and/or to produce machine‐readable catalog records in some transferable form are compared for seven vendors: Gaylord Information Systems, General Research Corporation, The Library Corporation, OCLC, Solinet, Utlas, and the Western Library Network. Major areas of exploration include: database characteristics, access, display, editing, new records, hard copy products, hardware, and price.

The automation of technical service functions has led to many changes in workflows and culture. Recent enhancements have leveraged systems developed by materials vendors of books and serials to further enhance library efficiency, resulting in adjustments to how work is assigned both inside and outside the library. Future developments are expected in technical service functions following the same trends, as well as changes that will provide ways to manage the emerging electronic products.

The majority of the articles reviewed this time deal with ILL and public libraries in one way or another. The review begins by looking at school libraries and their ability to handle ILL requests satisfactorily amongst themselves and then examines several papers critical of networking in public libraries. There is an argument that public libraries hardly need ILL at all because of the nature of their users and their needs. ILL is an expensive operation and the issue of fees and charges is much debated; the discussion examined here includes the suggestion that users can travel to consult materials and public libraries might ration ILL requests per user including children. The idea of using ILL as a revenue earner, or at least paying for itself, is questioned and a study of commercial document supply services is examined which pays special attention to the performance of the many sources available. A paper on ILL costing almost nothing is criticized as not taking account of all factors. Time, as well as money, is important and a study of supply time to the user shows that more could be done by requesting libraries to speed supply to the end‐user. The impact of network membership on ILL is considered and shows that net borrowers can soon become net lenders and vice‐versa. The reorganization of document supply from the US National Library of Medicine had considerable impact on the use of NLM which is analysed. Finally a note on the political aspects of ILL in southern Africa is noticed as dealing with an issue of potential significance.

The user interface, in broad terms, is the medium through which the user and the information come together. The types of searches a public access catalog (PAC) can perform are defined by the indexing strategy and retrieval software. The way the user's interest is communicated to the retrieval software and the way the results are communicated to the user is, by a more narrow definition, the interface software. Both the kinds of searches that can be performed by a variety of CD‐ROM PACs and how their workstations are used to accomplish the searches are considered.

The review begins with a study of several analyses of statistics relating to interlibrary loan. The subjective nature of some of these is stressed and the danger of using statistical data in isolation is highlighted. Statistical evidence is also brought into the discussion about the conflict between interlending and preservation which centres on the difference between the book and the text. Whilst two authors take a rather conservative approach, the third looks on the problem with a more liberal attitude. Although the intrinsic safety of the materials involved is a partial barrier to interlending in developing countries, writers from both Africa and Latin America emphasize the major obstacles to advancing ILL are professional attitudes and jealousies. The proceedings of a seminar in India are reported in which a number of participants put forward possible interlending models for their country. The deliberations in Australia also centre round the alternative models available, and arguments over the costs involved persist leading to some novel arguments about making ILL a free service. The development of interlending in Illinois is examined in some detail. The impact of interlending on acquisitions policies is discussed in two papers which show that interlending is still a backup for low use material when viewed in this context. The review closes with a discussion of the future particularly in terms of money and resources which are likely to become more and more limited. The demise of the US plan for a National Periodicals Center is used to show that money and power are major elements in deciding the fate of interlending schemes.

Stuart Scheingold's path-breaking The Politics of Rights ignited scholarly interest in the political mobilization of rights. The book was a challenge to the reigning popular and scholarly common sense regarding the supposedly self-executing nature of rights (what Scheingold called the “myth of rights”). Rights, Scheingold argued, could be resources for the pursuit of social change; but their realization in court doctrine and legislative output was not itself tantamount to meaningful social change. Thus embedded in The Politics of Rights is skepticism (or at least ambivalence) about the utility of rights politics for social movements. Scheingold was not ambivalent about the moral or normative value of rights themselves, although he did argue that the realization of rights was not by itself enough to overcome the manifold inequalities that structure modern life. The Politics of Rights, accordingly, is clear-eyed, but not cynical about rights advocacy. It is thus surprising, and keenly revealing, that Scheingold's final work – The Political Novel, which is ostensibly not about rights at all – points to mass cynicism, alienation, and the collapse of faith in governing institutions and logics as the animating elements of modern liberal democracies, including especially the United States. That rights are a vital part of the civic mythology whose collapse defines modern times suggests that the civil rights context of aspiration and struggle in which Scheingold, and nearly all of his followers (this author included), have conceived rights may be unnecessarily narrow. Rights may also be embedded, that is, in the modern condition of alienation, despair, and felt powerlessness. Inspired by Scheingold's investigation of how literature points to this modern condition of political estrangement, I offer an alternative backdrop for The Politics of Rights that is rooted in the bleak renderings of the American character found in much 1970's American popular and intellectual culture. Such a contextualization, I will argue, suggests that we envision The Political Novel as a companion piece to The Politics of Rights; together they illuminate both the mobilizing and demobilizing potential of the myth of rights.

A year or so ago I discovered Writer's Choice: a Library of Rediscoveries, by Bill and Linda Katz which is, in fact, a book of recovery. As a librarian, I am acquainted with the Katzes' well‐known reference tools. As an author, I felt immediate solidarity with their bookman's idea of bringing back literary works that had somehow disappeared before due notice had been taken—a whole world of neglected books into which my own overlooked novel would have fitted nicely, if anyone had known of it to nominate mention.

Good system documentation is the backbone to the success of any automated system, for only through complete and thorough documentation can the user fully understand and utilize a system's capability. This symposium focuses on printed documentation and the many related applications that affect the daily lives of computer users. Printed documentation takes different forms, including user and reference manuals, tutorials, reference cards, and “cheat sheets.” The various forms are produced by both system vendors and system users, the latter frequently adapting and modifying vendor‐prepared documentation to reflect local practice and meet specialized training needs.

Provides a bibliography of CD‐ROM for librarians, covering case studies, costs, product evaluation guidelines, databases, CDI, downloading/copyright and CD vs. online, for use when making decisions about the adoption of CD‐ROM.