scott@wuphys.UUCP (Scott Barthelmy) (12/25/84)
[]
Some months ago I posted a request to the net for information about
a machine readable library card catalog.
What follows is a summary of the replies received and other information
gathered along the way.
My thanks to those that replied and for allowing me to repost them in this
summary.
Table of Contents:
1 My Original request
2 Net Replies (with comments added)
3 List of Data Entry Companies (addresses, phones, contacts)
4 General Information/Comments & what we are doing
============== Section 1 Original Request ==========================
From scott@wuphys.UUCP (Scott Barthelmy) Mon Jul 23 17:16:32 1984
Newsgroups: net.wanted
Subject: machine readable library card catalog
Organization: Physics Dept., Washington Univ. in St. Louis
We are looking for a machine readable library card catalog for the physics
subjects of the Library of Congress (mostly QC, QA, & QB's). We have
approximately 13000 volumes.
We are the Physics Dept of Washington U in St Louis. We are a relatively
poor (all things are relative) department, so would like to get this free
but are willing to pay $500-1000 depending on the hit ratio.
In our efforts we have considered:
1) Buying from LoC. They don't have such.
2) Hiring a data entry company. Expensive!
3) Using optical data entry machines. Have access to a Kurzweil Reading
Machine, but according to the Kurzweil people not even their much more
sophisticated Data Entry machine will handle the messy library catalog
cards (bad page layout, too many fonts of different colors, changing
contrasts, and handwritten notations).
4) Using workstudy students for data entry. We figure 800 hours to get it
in and correct. Last resort.
If anyone has an offer or suggestions/pointers about the above attempts
please email to me:
Scott Barthelmy ihnp4!wuphys!scott
============== Section 2 Net Replies ==========================
I got replies from three people. Their replies are below. The bodies
of the replies are presented in full; only the headers have been edited
to cut the byte count. I have obtained their permission.
My comments are appended and so marked.
--------------------------------------------------------------
From: masscomp!decvax!dartvax!chip (Brig Elliott)
To: decvax!genrad!grkermit!masscomp!bonnie!clyde!burl!mgnetp!we53!busch!wuphys!scott
Subject: Re: machine readable library card catalog
Hi,
In the hopes that any information is better than none... Dartmouth
College has about 50% of its card catalog online. Perhaps all the
physics books have been included--or perhaps they can point you
to some other good clue.
(They've been tediously entering all the books since 1970 or so.)
You might try dropping a line to Emily Fayen, Baker Library,
Dartmouth College, Hanover NH 03755. She's in charge of the project.
Yours, Chip Elliott ..dartvax!chip
---- my comments ----
The next two notes are from a person connected with the Dartmouth
Library system.
--------------------------------------------------------------
From: masscomp!decvax!dartvax!betsy (Betsy Hanes Perry)
To: decvax!genrad!grkermit!masscomp!bonnie!clyde!burl!mgnetp!we53!busch!wuphys!scott
Subject: Re: machine readable library card catalog
You should talk to OCLC, the Ohio College Library Center,
and the oldest machine-readable card-catalog in the U.S. Here at Dartmouth,
we catalog many of our holdings on their computer. I'm sorry, but I have no
clue as to costs.
Their address is:
Ohio College Library Center
1125 Kinnear Road
COlumbus, OH 43212
You also might want to contact the RLG or Research Libraries Group, who
have the computer on which we do most of the rest of our cataloging;
if you want an address for them, write and I'll see what I can scout out.
Good luck!
Betsy Perry
Library Automation Dept.
Dartmouth College
UUCP: {decvax|linus|cornell}!dartvax!betsy
CSNET: betsy@dartmouth
ARPA: betsy%dartmouth@csnet-relay
--------- a followup note from Betsy ----------------
From: ihnp4!decvax!dartvax!betsy (Betsy Hanes Perry)
To: decvax!ihnp4!wuphys!scott
Dear Scott,
I showed your note to Emily Fayen, who's my boss.
(She can be reached at 603-646-2574 daytime, if you still need help.)
She had a couple more comments:
1. Talk to a high-level administrator at your University's library
and see if your collection may already be partially automated;
Emily thinks that your medical school, at least, is already working
on automating their catalog and you might be able to combine efforts.
2. Entering your collection into the OCLC computer will probably cost
at least $1.00 per document; $1000 is a very low bound for such a
large collection!
Good luck with your catalog!
Betsy Perry
P.S.
The Research Libraries Group can be reached at
RLG , INC.
Stanford University
Stanford, CA;
since they specialize in cataloging research documents, they may have more
of your collection already entered.
---- my comments ----
The OCLC has quite a nice deal. Most companies would like to be in a
similar situation. There is an annual membership charge to join the
OCLC. They also charge by the number of accesses and the connect time.
There are many scales depending on the type/intensity of access.
And this is the good part, they also charge for members to enter their
collections into the collective database.
I have talked to our head of catalogging at the main Washington U library
and she also stated that $1.00 per document was the lowest rate around.
Actually, $1 is the charge for a 'simple' card entry. This is unrealistic
because it was explained to me that most card or NOT 'simple'. They are
more complicated in that there are several to a dozen different card formats,
and that the 'interpretation' of these cards requires more than your standard
bottom rung 'keypuch operator'. The more realistic price range is 1.50-2.00.
This is too rich for us -- see section four.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: busch!we53!mgnetp!burl!clyde!stan
To: burl!mgnetp!we53!busch!wuphys!scott
Subject: Re: machine readable library card catalog
Have you looked into OCLC and MARC? When I delivered tapes and
printouts to Univ. of Illinois library programmers, they were using
these organizations as sources of machine-readable card catalog
information. There should be literature in the computer science
journals or in library journals on this topic. If that turns out
to be a dead end, you could try calling the U of I library for
information.
Stan King phone: 201-386-7433
Bell Labs, Whippany, NJ Cornet: 8+232-7433
room 2A-111 uucp: clyde!stan
============== Section 3 Data Entry Company List ===============
Below is a list of companies that do data entry work. This list was
given to me by a person in our main campus library who was in charge
of searching for companies who would enter their card catalog.
I have not talked with any of these companies for the reasons stated
elsewhere (they are too expensive for our budget). However, these companies
with contacts and telephone numbers may be of use to others who want
other types of entry work done.
ALTERTEXT
210 Lincoln St.
Boston, MA
Contact: Ellen Webb 617-426-0009
CAMDEN TYPE-N-GRAPHICS
5 Free St.
Camden, ME
Contact: Doug Leavitt 207-236-9500
CENTREX COMMUNICATIONS
2001 Van Ness Ave.
San Fransisco, CA
Contact: John Stevens 415-441-4252
COMPLEX CORPORATION
800 Roosevelt Rd.
Building G
Glen Ellyn, IL
Contact: Hans Jeske 312-858-4440
CONVERTEXT, INC.
631 Park St.
Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
Contact: Ann Lukasiewicz 306-545-1923
CRANE TYPESETTING SERVICES
1611 Main St.
Barnstable, MA
Contact: Tom Lewis/Doris Parker 617-362-2700
DATA BASE INC
Tater Peeler Rd
POB 593
Lebanon, TN
Contact: John or Joyce Aranjo 615-449-4504
DIMMENSIONS IN SCANNING INC
4211 SW Freeway
Houston, TX
Contact: Susan Coon/Lucy Franks 713-864-7845
ESQUIRE (Greenwich Information)
601 W 54th St.
New York, NY
Contact: FDeborah Webb/Frank Lasenna 212-581-5050
INFORMATION CONSULTANTS INC
1012 20th St.
NW, Washington, DC
Contact: Bob Young 202-822-5200
JANNA INC
1533 Pat Brooker Rd.
Suite D-1
University City, TX
Contact: Arty Niland 512-694-0835
JIM RUSSELL
pob 1838
Stillwater, OK
Contact: Jim Russell 403-377-0010
JUDSON BROOKS CO
1241 Superior Ave
Cleveland, OH
Contact: Chip Pryor 216-621-8383, x-241
MARK J. CORP.
8006 18th Ave.
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Contact: John Laporte 514-376-5940
MAXIMUS CORP.
McLean Office Bldg.
Suite 406
6723 Whittier Ave.
McLean, VA
Contact: Robert White 703-734-4200
OMNITEXT
213 W. Institute Place
Room 411
Chicago, IL
Contact: Rick Larsen 312-337-7808
PACKARD PRESS
10th and Spring Garden St.
Philadelphia, PA
Contact: Robert Stack/Perry Wolfe 215-236-2000
PANDICK PRESS
345 Hudson St.
New York, NY
Contact: Pat Abrmai 212-807-5231
REGENCY TYPOGRAPHIC SERVICES
2867 E Allegheny Ave.
Philadelphia, PA
Contact: Marty Farlow/Sheryl Katz 215-425-8810, x-296
TYPOGRAPHIC HOUSE
63 Melcher St.
Boston, MA
Contact: Jack Tobin 617-482-1719
================== Section 4 our present plan ==================
Some general comments:
OCLC stands for Ohio College Library Center.
MARC is an industry standard (or nearly so) specifying the format
of computerised library catalogs. It is MAchine Readable Catalog.
RLIN is Research LIbrary N????? system.
The Kurzweil Reading Machine (series 400) is not sophisticated enough to
handle multiple fonts or strange page formating. Even the Kurzweil 4000
which is really a nice system (multi fonts per page, figure recognition for
non-processing, simple learning sessions for knew fonts, an ability to
'guess' at new symbols) can not handle the vagaries of typical library
catalog cards. The combination of strange page format layout, multiple
fonts, multiple colors, and the worst of all "handwritten" notations
make the reading impossible. This was explained to me by Leslie Fowler
at Kurzweil Computer Products (I think their Chicago office). She said
they get many similar request for processing of library catalog cards.
Maybe the next generation of ICR/OCR machines will handle it(?).
We have given up on all the above methods. They are too expensive and/or
not well matching to our physics library structure and inventory.
We are presently using two work-study students to enter the 'shelf list' card
information into a database management system called TROLL/USE.
Actually this is part of a large dbms software package called USE (User
Software Engineering from UC San Franisco, UC Berkeley, and Vrije
Universiteit, Amsterdam Netherlands). Because they are work-study
the price is right. Based on 5000 entered to date, they average 13 per hour
with an error rate of one out of 100 cards. We have been fortunate
in that both sudents are touch typists, conscientious, and one knew
something about libraries before starting. They work two hours a day five
days a week. The average entry contains 300 characters.
While the TROLL system allows for a wide range of activity it requires
custom user interfaces to be written for accessing. There is good
provission within the software package for constructing these custom
interfaces. This aspect has not been well investigated yet (almost zero
code written) and so it remains to be seen how well our desires are
implemented and how extensive a system we set up. My opinion is that TROLL
has an excellent data entry provission ('tbe'), but that the accessing and
manipulation is totally unsuited for the general library user.
Even unsuitable for the library user that is conversant with
computers/languages/opsys's. (If anyone knows how to get around the
requirement that an accesser must have write as well as read permission,
I would greatly appreciate hearing from you.) I suspect in a few months
more will be known & I may post a followup on what has been decided and learned.
Summarily yours,
Scott ihnp4!wuphys!scott
"I am a child of the unixverse."