Willard McCarty <MCCARTY@vm.epas.utoronto.ca> (02/07/90)
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 1009. Tuesday, 6 Feb 1990. (1) Date: Mon, 05 Feb 90 23:43:36 CST (47 lines) From: "Bill Ball" <C476721@UMCVMB> Subject: online catalogs (2) Date: 06 Feb 90 01:08:56 EST (87 lines) From: James O'Donnell <JODONNEL@PENNSAS> Subject: Why Telnet libraries? Why not? (3) Date: Tue, 06 Feb 90 00:50:24 EDT (60 lines) From: "Matthew B. Gilmore" <GY945C@GWUVM> Subject: telnet to other catalogs (4) Date: Tue, 6 Feb 90 00:45:00 EST (32 lines) From: Peter Roosen-Runge <CS100006@YUSol> Subject: Why I telnet to other libraries (5) Date: Tue, 06 Feb 90 11:48:11 CST (20 lines) From: ENCOPE@LSUVM Subject: Reasons to TELNET to Other Libraries (6) Date: Tue 06 Feb 90 10:28:11 (28 lines) From: dusknox@skipspc.idbsu.edu (Skip_Knox) (7) Date: Tue, 6 Feb 90 12:42:30 EST (31 lines) From: "A. Ralph Papakhian" <PAPAKHI@IUBVM> Subject: Re: 3.1008 why telnet to other libraries? (136) (8) Date: Tue, 6 Feb 90 17:15:00 EST (48 lines) From: Ivy Anderson <ANDERSON@binah.cc.brandeis.edu> Subject: RE: 3.1008 why telnet to other libraries? (136) (1) -------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 05 Feb 90 23:43:36 CST From: "Bill Ball" <C476721@UMCVMB> Subject: online catalogs Thanks to the several people who responded to my request, Some with a copy of the INTERNET LIBRARY file--i have included the first several lines of this file at the end of this note. In response to Marian Sperberg-McQueen: the reason to ask about access to catalogs at other universities is to see what is out there. I had no idea how useful Bitnet would be in my work until I got onto some lists and established some contacts. Similarly, until I try out the various catalogs I don't know how useful they will be. May be a lot. Maybe not so much. I'm willing to risk wasting my time to find out. Concerning electronic catalogs in general: I share your frustration at times. Ours doesn't cover the entire collection and crashes pretty much on the hour. Moreover its capabilities seem at times pathetic--it won't alphabetize more than 30 titles (c'mon my watch can do that) and it won't allow the Boolean NOT in searches. But, on the other hand, I can log on to it at 2 a.m. from my home, put together a bibliography, save it on disk for future annotation, and know what the circulation status of each book currently is. Too bad they won't take orders via the computer and then deliver :-) Seriously, electronic catalogs are clearly superior in concept and utility. Their implementation may be a bit lacking however. Bill Ball Dept. Pol. Sci. U. Mo. - Columbia c476721@UMCVMB ---------------file:-INTERNET-LIBRARY--------------------------------- INTERNET-ACCESSIBLE LIBRARY CATALOGS & DATABASES November 8, 1989 Send corrections and additions to Art St. George: STGEORGE@UNMB (BITNET) or STGEORGE@BOOTES.UNM.EDU (Internet) Section 1: Catalogs & Databases accessible without charge [Please note: Dr. Art St. George supplies the most recent version of his Internet list to Humanist on a regular basis; the latest will be coming shortly. --W.M.] (2) --------------------------------------------------------------86---- Date: 06 Feb 90 01:08:56 EST From: James O'Donnell <JODONNEL@PENNSAS> Subject: Why Telnet libraries? Why not? From: Jim O'Donnell (Penn, Classics) Michael Sperberg-McQueen says so many things I agree with, and then almost answers his own question at the end, that I fear I will seem to be flippant in responding: Why not Telnet libraries? For me, it's one more resource. Sometimes finding a book [this all started when MCCARTHY@CUA couldn't get his ILL people to find something, and I found it in two places in five minutes on TELNET], sometimes it's improving a reference [e.g., I have a note that such-and-such was published in 1961 and now I see a footnote that says 1964: if one or two library catalogues say unequivocally 1961, I feel better: yes, autopsy is always better, but sometimes of course the ref. is from something I ILL'ed two years ago and forgot the Xerox the title page], sometimes it's vulgar curiosity [that Michigan has the Wilson Disc humanities periodical index hooked to their computer terminal lets me play with that without going to the library, so I can look up all my friends and see what they've published lately], but sometimes it's what I would call high-class curiosity, and it's of that I want most to speak. When you find yourself in the card catalogue of a decent library, you are normaly encumbered. Briefcase, notepad, pile of books from the stacks, perhaps hat and coat. (I should say that at PENN, our own computer system is good from about 1968, which means that a troglodyte like myself still needs the card catalogue a lot. I have access, by the way, to the PENN computer catalogue from home, and now regularly enter the library with a fistful of printouts, already sorted by floor and catalogue number: I can also download information to my disk at home directly.) So perhaps you are looking at something in the B's, when a stray and vagrant thought passes through your mind of a connection, for which you would have to schlepp all the way to the S's. Well, perhaps by the time you finish what you're doing in the B's, it slips your mind; or you're tired and cranky and don't feel like schlepping back there; or in a hurry. So you don't follow it up. Not so from home: the most vagrant thought leads you flitting through the alphabet in seconds. Dry hole? No problem: no pain, no loss, and you can look another way. I take that, small as it sounds, to be a major gain in the opportunity for serendipity. I have found myself, with one or another of the libraries I can call, browsing for an hour, wandering up one side of the library and down the other, without ever leaving my desk. Oh, I can't look at the books, but I never could look at the books at midnight from my desk at home before anyway. My education is being enhanced. Now, there are other palpable advantages as well. If from home, I'm trying to find whether something exists at all, or what its title or author might be, the Penn catalogue that only goes back to 1968 is a hindrance on older stuff. I cited Michigan and Berkeley in an earlier posting because they're relatively easy to use (esp. Michigan) and they seem to have a lot more older stuff on line. RLIN is even better in some ways (though moderately hostile): I don't have OCLC, but I know someone whose institution lets him have that. I'd LIKE to have NUC pre-'56 on-line, but that's for the sweet by-and-by. But in the meantime, Michigan, for example, let's me search not by author/title/subject (where subjects are rigidly controlled by librarian's subject categories, and we all know how tricky a business they are), but by keyword: a keyword search generally draws three or four times as many items as a subject search -- lots of dross to sort out sometimes, but also some nuggets you would otherwise miss. I think every user will find different kind of nuggets for different purposes, and that's as it should be. Clearly, all this is an intermediate stage. One thing that our people at PENN tell me may happen is that we will be able to place the actual ILL orders from our terminals, and their ILL office will become a postage-and-handling station, with reference librarians helping you with the really difficult track-downs. Further, I assume that libraries will put more and more information on-line this way: I'd like to have access to a good encyclopedia this way (anybody know anybody on TELNET who's put even a mediocre encyclopedia on line this way? when you're trawling the card catalogue and find somebody interesting you've never heard of, it would be handy to have an encyclopedia article within finger's reach). I'd like to have a kind of Borges-ian Library of All Libraries that would always tell me immediately where anything was in a vast chain of facilities. In the meantime, we've got 1990. Not a bad sort of place to hang out, when you come to think about it, not yet reaching its full potential, but with more resources than we once had. Yes, it drives you nuts sometimes trying to track things down; and other times it's as much fun as Flight Simulator, and more useful. Lege feliciter! (3) --------------------------------------------------------------74---- Date: Tue, 06 Feb 90 00:50:24 EDT From: "Matthew B. Gilmore" <GY945C@GWUVM> Subject: telnet to other catalogs Marian: It is a shame that UIC hasn't done a good job automating its catalog. I think that is part of the problem--not having finished the job and junked the card catalog. It is difficult and frustrating to try to find things with so many different systems. Sounds like a botched job. Also ILL is undersupported, which again complicates the user's life. Does UIC have point-of-use guides for all these systems? And classes too? I sympathize with the tangibility factor--a card is there and doesn't go down. But card catalogs are really hard to use _well_. They are tricky--there are filing rules, there are Library of Congress Subject headings to know, there is name order to remember, and access points are far fewer. Anybody can use it, but the tangibility factor works against its *proper* use. If you don't find it *it isn't there*. (At least for most users.) With an online catalog, the user realizes he/she is dipping into a black box and might not find everything. That awareness is helpful--particularly if it means the user searches more creatively and diligently, or *asks for help*. Librarians are there to help. I start to loose patience/sympathy with those who won't ask questions or who aren't willing to learn. Yes, librarians are trying to foster self-help--teaching the user to fish--but that is part of education. Systems should be easy to use, so that the process is simpler. As for telnet access to other catalogs, there are several reasons for such access. a. Subject searching. Until OCLC brings up its new system, and it is available for the end-user (patron), telneting to other catalogs may be the only subject access to resources outside your own institution. Some systems have good subject access, others not. ****It is worth noting that numbers of telnet accessible sytems all run on similar/the same software system--NOTIS--and use the same search commands. b. Currency. Other institutions may have greater financial resources and may be able to buy more and have the most recent books-- the University of California, for example, is usually pretty up to date. c. Serendipity. Who knows what someone else might have found and added to their collection? d. Verification. Partial cites are often useless in OCLC but more flexible systems may help find the elusive information. (If you had not guessed, I am a librarian, but also an researcher. Maybe we really need to user inculcate patience and curiousity, while fixing the systems we've been lumbered with/have lumbered ourselves with.) (4) --------------------------------------------------------------39---- Date: Tue, 6 Feb 90 00:45:00 EST From: Peter Roosen-Runge <CS100006@YUSol> Subject: Why I telnet to other libraries My own university library has fairly reasonable software (NOTIS) to access its online catalogue, but the library is "new" and underfunded. So I find I get a better picture of areas of interest if I browse in larger libraries especially since they tend to get new books more rapidly and more comprehensively. I could use FELIX at the University of Toronto but I find the software maddening. Even Melvyl (University of California) for all its warts is better. FELIX is, so far as I know, not available through telnet; at any rate, I dial it directly. Melvyl is readily and quite reliably available through telnet. So far my most productive uses of Melvyl has been filling in partial references (e. g., only author and date, or part of a title), exploring obscurities (e. g. "The Tired Businessman's Adventure Library") and collecting book titles for a course reading list into a file, which can then be edited and passed to the Library as a set of purchase requests. (I find they are pretty good about ordering if the request is tied to a course. As a result, my reading lists are quite imaginative not to say creative.) To sum up: if your own university or college library is small and uneven in scope, the catalog of a very large one can itself be a valuable resource. And even a small online catalog is far more valuable for exploration and collecting references than a card catalog or microfiche -- for the obvious reasons that you can interleave catalog searching with writing and research at your workstation without having to leave your office or your house, and you can capture the bibliographic data as a file. ............... Peter Roosen-Runge (5) --------------------------------------------------------------25---- Date: Tue, 06 Feb 90 11:48:11 CST From: ENCOPE@LSUVM Subject: Reasons to TELNET to Other Libraries I'm a frequent user of TELNET for the purpose of using the catalogues of "foreign" libraries. At LSU, the library removes books from the online catalogue when they are lost or stolen, which means that the titles do not appear in a subject search, which means that a true, complete subject search can only be carried out using a less zealous (or perhaps less efficient) online catalogue. Another common occurence at LSU is the presumptive demise of a book. A book that gets mis-shelved is presumed lost (once report as missing), then removed from the catalogue after a waiting period (I don't know how long it remains in the catalogue under the "lost" heading). Many times, such legally dead books tumble off the shelves, get put back in the right place by good samaritans, and return to a half- or zombie life, available but not living in the catalogue. On several occasions I have looked up a book in a foreign library via TELNET, then found that book on the shelves of my library under the same call number, even when listed as missing in or deleted from our catalogue. So there are a couple of reasons to use TELNET. (6) --------------------------------------------------------------37---- Date: Tue 06 Feb 90 10:28:11 From: dusknox@skipspc.idbsu.edu (Skip_Knox) I would like to echo Marian Sperberg-McQueen's sentiments about on-line catalogs and about the uses of telnet to get to other libraries. I work at the data center at my university, but my Ph.D. is in history. When the university went onto Internet, one of the first things our systems programmer did was to drag me over to his terminal and log on to the library system at Brigham Young University. He was tickled by the technology, as was I, but he also thought I would be very excited by the prospect of being able to browse the holdings of BYU. He was a tad disappointed, I think, when my reaction was, why in the world would I want to do that? Similarly, when I got my first list of Internet nodes, I was disappointed to see endless lists of libraries. So what? I share Sperberg-McQueen's recollection of dissertation research -- check my library for the book, then go to Interlibrary Loan (bless them one and all). With Internet, what had been a simple task involving paper and pencil and a minute or two, is turned into an arcane text adventure with dubious payoff. Yet and still, everyone seems so very excited. So I, too, wonder, am I missing something here? (7) --------------------------------------------------------------38---- Date: Tue, 6 Feb 90 12:42:30 EST From: "A. Ralph Papakhian" <PAPAKHI@IUBVM> Subject: Re: 3.1008 why telnet to other libraries? (136) Providing telnet access to other library catalogs is simply another reference resource. At least for a century (probably more) research libraries have been purchasing book catalogs of other libraries. More often than not, these catalogs were placed in reference sections. More than likely, no two of these catalogs were arranged in the same way or used the same type face, or even used the same system of bibliographic description. They are not easy to use and they are frequently in non-English languages. But they have been useful reference resources for a variety of purposes. I really so no difference between purchasing the book catalog of, say, the Azalia E. Hackley Collection at the Detroit Public Library and putting it our reference section or providing telnet access to the vast Univ. of Calif. online catalog. I shouldn't say "no" difference. To use the book catalog, our clientele have to come to the library and find it on the shelf and use it in the library (since it is a reference book that doesn't circulate). To use the telnet access, many of our clientele can accomplish that from machines in their offices or homes or from terminal/pc clusters located around the campus. I just don't understand why there is a question about providing such reference resources. Am I missing something? Most sincerely, ##### @@@@ ### @@@@ MUSIC @@ ### @@ A. Ralph Papakhian, Music Library @@ ### @@ LIBRARY Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405 @@ ### @@ (812) 855-2970 ### ##### (8) --------------------------------------------------------------55---- Date: Tue, 6 Feb 90 17:15:00 EST From: Ivy Anderson <ANDERSON@binah.cc.brandeis.edu> Subject: RE: 3.1008 why telnet to other libraries? (136) In response to Marian Sperberg-McQueen's message about the confusing plethora of library catalogs and databases with which she is apparently required to cope at the University of Illinois at Chicago, I'd like to pipe up ever so humbly for the faceless number of "librarians" you wish would understand your plight. We do. I think the interlibrary loan situation you describe is rather unique; most libraries, certainly this is true at Brandeis, don't make you do the work of locating your own lending institution. That's their (our) job, and it's a lot more efficient if the library does it; staff can be trained in efficient search techniques, in knowing what institution is likely to lend what sort of material, etc. The attendant complaint about a variety of search interfaces is also one with which we librarians are concerned. There are at least two NISO (National Information Standards Organization) standards designed to deal with this problem: (1) Common Command Language for Information Retrieval, which when implemented would require a conforming library retrieval system to support a uniform set of search commands regardless of (i.e. in addition to) the system's native command mode; and (2) Z39.50, whose English name I disremember, which defines a standard way for independent systems to interoperate so that one can query any number of remote systems transparently from a single local system. That's the good news: the bad news is that none of this is implemented yet, at least not anywhere that I know of. There are a number of development efforts and pilot projects in place however. Carnegie Mellon in particular is working on one such project. And additional strategies are being explored at some libraries, e.g. using HyperCard as a front-end to a variety of disparate databases. All of which is to say, we do understand the problem, and spend a great deal of our professional time (collectively speaking) trying to come up with solutions. That may be little comfort in the bibliographic haze you are confronted with today, but perhaps tomorrow... As for your larger question "why telnet to other libraries?", I leave that to your colleagues to answer. I too am interested in the responses. Ivy Anderson Brandeis University Libraries