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| Public-Access Computer Systems Review 1, no. 1 (1990): 51-55.
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| Reviews
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Arms, Caroline R., ed. Campus Strategies for Libraries and
Electronic Information. Bedford, MA.: Digital Press, 1990.
ISBN: 1-55558-036-X.  Price: $34.95.

Reviewed by Steve Cisler.


Digital Press seems to have caught a wave as a number of significant
titles issue forth from the Bedford, Massachusetts publisher.  John
Quarterman's The Matrix will interest many librarians involved in
networks and telecommunications, but Arms new work, part of the EDUCOM
Strategies Series On Information Technology, should be read both inside
and outside the academic library community.  Besides readers of the
PACS Forum, I hope that college and university administrators,
librarians in urban public libraries, and database vendors carefully
read these fifteen chapters.

Sandwiched in between three chapters by Arms ("The Technological
Context," "Other Projects and Progress," and "The Context for
the Future") are twelve chapters discussing a wide variety of projects
in large institutions and library consortia such as OCLC and RLG.
For the most part, these are success stories, and the future plans they
describe are ambitious and costly.  Unless you want to read about your
own institution first, I recommend you start with the introduction
and read in a linear, non-hypertext manner.

In "The Technological Context" Arms gives a clear historical survey
of the past three decades of library "automation."  Those who have
lived through much of it may disagree with the slant, but, to this
latecomer, it put the past and present into perspective.

Arms comments on the slow emergence of ISO/OSI standards, and says
it is essential for the academic library systems to support TCP/IP
networks now, even though others are supporting the Z39.50 protocol
for information retrieval on these networks as well as the gateways
between the two.  As one academic librarian commented to me,
"Z39.50 is very fashionable these days, but it has not been
implemented fully yet."

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In her discussion of CD-ROM, Arms discusses the cost of disc
production. As the medium becomes more popular outside the library
field, prices should come down, but Hitachi was claiming in 1986
that drives would be less than $300 in 1987, and this has not
happened. On page 32, Arms says "For full-text products that
might be part of a personal library, such as an encyclopedia,
the complete works of Shakespeare, or a cumulative subscription
to a professional journal, prices eventually should be comparable
to those of audio CDs."  I agree that Shakespeare might be priced
that cheaply, but the other categories are too costly to produce
in print form for the disc version to be priced at $10 to $15.
Until you have the economy of scale found in feature film video
cassette marketing and production, you won't see reference works
at that price.  My only other strong disagreement with anything
that Arms wrote is her contention on page 33 that Apples and IBMs
cannot exchange data between floppy disks.  The machine on which
I am writing this review can read Mac, Apple II, and IBM 3.5 "
disks, and this is not a new development.

Michael McGill's and Drew Racine's chapter on OCLC and
David Richards' RLG chapter are the sorts of accounts one might
read in a corporate history: coverage of the goals and mission
statements and the high points of past years, but no discussion
of the tensions within the consortia that produce changes in
administration or research direction over the years.  I would be
faced with the same problem, were I writing about my employer,
so I guess, it takes outsiders to fill these stories out a little
more.

All the chapters on the individual schools reminded me of my
favorite motif in old fairy tales where the hero sets out on a
journey, meets unusual people or creatures who accompany him and
ultimately prove very useful as he faces his own challenges later
in the story.  In this case, the reader can tour a number of
innovative, well-organized, and creative libraries, take all the
ideas along, and use their strengths to plan and shape of his/her
own library of the future.  One useful example: Northwestern
University made a progress report in 1968 that outlined
nine requirements for a library automation system.  These
stressed the need to serve library purposes as well as
information retrieval needs, the need for expandability,
compatibility with "systems presently being developed by the
national library" as well as other parts of an electronic library
philosophy that did not exist 21 years ago.

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Clemson University has the goal of providing access to information
with as few barriers as possible.  They have mounted a number of
commercial databases from IAC and the National Agricultural Library,
and they are negotiating for access to nine other databases from
Maxwell Online, and they are encouraging other libraries
throughout the state, including public ones, to form a network
open to most, if not all, citizens in South Carolina.  Because
of the interest in multi-type libraries in California, this is
the one I will watch with greatest interest.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is one of the
largest academic libraries in the U.S., and it has been
serving the university and over eight hundred libraries around
the state.  Their circulation system is claimed to be the largest
in the country with 800 terminals online.  The authors do not claim
it is perfect; they list the shortcomings of the LCS system.
However, I was impressed by many of their system enhancements,
including links between IBM SNA networks and TCP/IP networks,
redundant access methods for databases needed by public service
librarians to assure connections when needed, and a special
end-user interface for searching commercial databases.

The Brigham Young University Law Library offers a rich selection
of micro and mainframe services from desktop publishing to
unlimited use of LEXIS and WESTLAW (at a cost of only $25,000
per year for each service).  BYU has been providing distributed
access to these databanks since 1982 for WESTLAW and 1989 for LEXIS.
Using a single multiplexed line and a set number of passwords,
the system signals when all lines are busy.  At first reluctant,
the two competing vendors are now quite willing to help out
with training, even to the point of bringing in extra terminals
during the school year for use in temporary learning centers
(TLCs).

The Georgia Institute of Technology chapter shows just how
committed they are to electronic delivery of information.  Providing
access to a number of commercial and library databases has raised
the expectations of their computer literate users.  Although the
only access is the BRS command structure, the 17,000 users performed
over a million searches in 1987/88.  In addition the library
has subscriptions to CD-ROM databases and has been negotiating with
the vendors to allow campus network access to the data.  (There
seems to be a typographical error on page 159, where it is
indicated that GIT was a test site for MARC I in the 1950s.)

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Both the University of Southern California and Carnegie Mellon
University describe their efforts to create libraries for the
twenty-first century.  USC's Center for Scholarly
Technology and CMU's Project Mercury are working on software
and systems that could be used in other settings.  USC's chapter
begins to describe funding issues; CMU mentions that their grants
will run out some day.  Another volume on funding strategies would
keep Arms busy assembling a companion work.  She has given us a
tempting menu from a number of fine chefs.  Now, how do we
all pay the bill?

Columbia University offers a diverse number of services, but Paula
Kaufman's explanation of the changing organization's structure was
extremely informative, as was the philosophy and strategy for
library and information services.  In some cases, there is not
funding to implement the strategy or to live up to the philosophy.

Cornell's Mann Library's philosophy is that the scholar does not
need to be in the library to use the resources.  The scholars'
workstations will provide access to more and more of the needed
information in electronic form, and their ability to pay should
not determine their access.  As this scholarly information
system is formed, with the support of numerous governmental
and commercial organizations, they are asking many questions,
some of which will undoubtedly be answered in a later report.

The thoughts in Cornell's chapter are reflected throughout this
book--a mixture of dreams, visions, and hard reality.  Although
the models may not apply to some smaller institutions, the lessons
learned by the larger schools are very useful to all academic
libraries.  While I recommend this book, I hope that Caroline Arms
will compile a similar volume for schools with fewer resources than
the ones featured here.

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About the Author

Steve Cisler
Apple Computer Library
sac@apple.com
ALANET: ALA0728

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| Copyright (C) 1990 by Steve Cisler.  This review may be
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