this new capability. My discussion of issues here has been rather devoid of solutions, but welcome to the real world. Thank you.
Discussion
HenryShaffer, NCState: At Northwestern and at UCLA, are the online catalogs readily available throughout the campus communications network and dial-in?
Wittenborg: At UCLA, there are 37 hardwired terminals distributed throughout the campus library. Members of the campus community, such as faculty, can set up accounts directly with the Office of Academic Computing and access ORION from terminals in their homes and offices or from the 1000 terminals available on the campus Computing Center's network. In addition, some 80 non- University of California institutions have search-only accounts. Library staff access some 200 terminals for their processing and public service work.
Roll: A good question. At Northwestern, there are, I think, a couple hundred terminals scattered throughout the library. There is a card catalog there, but it's for the old stuff. The library system is connected into the data switch that serves the academic computing center. That switch allows a couple of hundred terminals in public locations all over campus to switch between the Cyber 845 and the VAX academic computers and the Library's 4361.
The issue of dial access has become one of considerable visibility since we installed an SL-100 voice-data switch about a year ago, amid great expectations that faculty members would be able to access the catalog, without any problem, from their office, and would no longer would have to go to the Library to look up things. Reality, however, is a little bit different. Two problems: the most visible one is that it costs money to use the telephone system for data, about $20 a month for a data line currently, although that price should decrease. Also, the access device initially was selling at $600, and people who had been previously using a modem for data access over voice telephone lines have been rather outraged; I have a file of interesting letters from them about the subject. They are missing the point. The real point is that the Library's 4361 is equipped with exactly three dial-up ports, and the library doesn't have the money currently to expand the dial-up access. Despite the fact that I explain this to my colleagues who write these letters complaining about the $20 a month charge, they still see the $20
a month as the main problem. We have to work on this; the expectations are there, and we need to find a solution.
Dana Cart~right, Syracuse Universi~ Would Mr. Haeger comment on the adequacy of the MARC format for bibliographic control of these new classes of information that need to be delivered?
Haeger. There's been a fairly successful project over the last three and a half years to develop several modifications to the MARC format for a variety of purposes. In fact, MARC format really should now be understand as a family of formats, rather than as a single format. There is a format for books, a format for serials, maps, sound recordings, scores. A new format, a modification of the one that was originally developed for films, has been proposed, called "visual materials", which is supposed to cover everything from architectural drawings to prints-- almost any two dimensional graphic material.
There is also a new format for archival and manuscript control which is desig ned to provide an adequate egg carton, if you will, in which to stick information at the collection level, which is now in the process of being accepted not only by university archival collections but also by state archives, historical societies, and the National Archives.
There is no MARC format at the moment for spatially- referenced data, other than the MARC format for maps, and it is clear that that format is notsatisfactory for the kind of control that we are going to need over spatially referenced information. We can hope that the MARC format is flexible enough to meet most or all of our needs.
Wittenborg: I'd like to add to that. It's interesting that a format has been accepted for machine-readable data files (MRDF), and a number of large research libraries are working on a project to catalog those materials regardless of where they're held.
Leslie Maltz, Stevens Institute of Technologf . All of you represent the large university environment. Would you comment on the role of automation in the smaller university environment, where we certainly have much more limited libraries and also perhaps limited demand? Where might automation fit in that environment?
Wittenborg: All libraries have the same basic needs in terms of ordering materials, receiwng, checking-in serials, claiming missing issues, and paying invoices. These are labor-intensive tasks which must be done