82VINEAccessions

VINE

Vine Volume 12 (4) 1982 pp29-32

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NETWORK II: Accessions list online at Edinburgh University Library by Derek Law*

Edinburgh University has a sophisticated computing environment based on the two ICL 2900 computers of the Edinburgh Regional Computing Centre (ERCC). These can be accessed by around 700 terminals, the heaviest concentration being within the university; the library itself has recently installed half a dozen terminals which are used for a variety of administrative functions as well as to access information on 20,000 serial titles received by libraries in the Edinburgh area.

Recently, and for its own purposes, ERCC developed a facility called VIEW, which is a viewdata-type system containing information about the Centre (such as holiday opening hours) and its services (such as a microcomputer laboratory). It is based on the concept of pages or screens of information being called up by the use of numbers chosen from an initial menu. VIEW displays pages from a 'structured' file on a terminal. A number of files is generally available giving information about using the system and its availability, etc., (over 4 Mb). The Library at once saw potential applications in this as a public service, both as a general tool and also as a specific means of reaching many members of the university who might be infrequent users of Library facilities. When VIEW was examined, we determined to seek to provide an experimental service in an area of information of general interest; to give information not at present available; information which might repay the investment of the staff time which would undoubtedly be involved; and to safeguard the needs of non-computer users. A cumulative union accessions list seemed to meet these criteria.

Edinburgh University Library is a dispersed library scattered over many sites with a structure which is heavily decentralised. Thus, cataloguing is performed in a number of locations and accessions lists are produced locally, if at all, to meet the needs of the users of that section of the Library only. If all accessions were included, this would be of general interest; if it were cumulative, covering 2-3 months, this would be a significant expansion of the existing service while author, title and keyword searches would improve that service; by recording ISBN's we would begin to build up a store of records which could later be upgraded to MARC format using these control numbers; if the information were printed out on a weekly basis for distribution, readers without access to terminals would be no worse off.

ERCC agreed to modify the software from their existing system and discussions

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* Derek Law is Sub-Librarian, Medical Library, Edinburgh University Library

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took place with Dr. A. Gibbons early in 1981 on our requirements which, it was agreed, should mimic the existing accessions list in output. Author, title, date of publication and ISBN are taken from the cataloguing slip which is used for normal catalogue production and a two letter subject code is added especially for the new system. Each field has a maximum length and our typists abbreviate as necessary. It was decided to restrict information in this way (although the field lengths are generous) because the list is meant as a cheap, ephemeral guide to what is new rather than to act as a catalogue. It was also decided that the Library's own typists should do the data preparation; equipment was selected on the advice of ERCC and the training of staff begun. Dr. Gibbons developed a package to accept and validate each week's new accessions and to produce an appropriately structured file for VIEW.

Meanwhile discussions on output continued. There was little difficulty with the online facility. We wished author, title and subject search and only the last presented problems. Search keys are input simply as the whole or part of an author's surname or all or part of the title, the character string then followed by a "?". The pages of text can also be leafed through using carriage return or '-' plus carriage return, to move forward and back. Subject searching was more of a problem because of the different degrees of specificity required by each section of the library. For example the Main Library receives so few medical books that the single heading 'Medicine' is sufficient for it, while the Medical Library clearly would require many more headings, most of which are redundant for other libraries. It seemed over complicated to create a thesaurus of approved headings; this would have greatly complicated the work of cataloguers and needlessly hampered a simple system. Instead, each library is treated as a 'subject' and the great majority of them are in fact subject specific, as Law, Music, Chemistry, etc. Each library was then given the option of using Sub-headings appropriate to the subject. In all cases, the libraries either chose the list of headings presently used for their manual accessions list or chose not to subdivide at all.

Although held up by hardware delays, the system has now been operational for six months and all ERCC users throughout the University can check the recent accessions of four faculties. Other sections of the library will be added as soon as possible. Each week 200-400 records are created by our typists, each creating her own small file. These files are concatenated into a single file at the beginning of the following week and some simple validation performed on each record's structure. A copy of the corrected file is then archived and the

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file itself merged with the previous masterfile. Since the optimum size of masterfile was estimated at two months, when the new records are added, the records from the ninth previous week are discarded. As a byproduct of this operation, a weekly file is created for each section of the library which wishes to distribute a conventional accessions list. The file is run off to stencil on an auxiliary printer and stencilled duplicates prepared in the usual way. This older technology will be particularly suitable for areas of the university such as the Arts Faculty where there are few terminals. Some public access terminals have been provided in the library, but one of the delights of the online accessions list is that it completely removes the need for the user to leave his department to check this information. According to ERCC figures, over 4000 registered staff and students using over 700 terminals can access the system from outside the library.

The system is designed to be largely self-instructing. The user first specifies which computer he wishes to use and indicates that the process he requires is called LIBRARY. Since there is a large variety of terminals in use and since output has to be related to screen size, he is then offered a list of 20 terminal types and asked to indicate which he is using. The user is then offered a menu of the information available on the accessions list, including a short introductory guide. LIBRARY originally held only the Accessions List file, so that the user was led directly to the menu for that system. Recently, current serials, local library information files, alert messages on matters of library interest and a readers' comment/suggestion file were mounted, thereby adding a second level to the menu choices. As a result of comments already received, we have also added an experimental keyword search. This allows truncation and 'AND' searches and searches simultaneously on author and title information.

Use of the service has expanded rapidly as publicity has begun to take effect. Calls on the system are monitored and grew from ten a month to twenty a day very rapidly. The viewdata concept has proved a relatively simple facility to implement and promises to be a particularly powerful tool, if only because of the widespread nature of the existing network and the consequent ease of access for readers.

Further uses of the network

This comparatively simple, initial application has proved that the network

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can be a powerful tool. The library is now considering other areas in which network facilities could be of benefit, and the most obvious is for transmitting requests from libraries and from users via the electronic mail system. On the library level, two approaches are possible: first, an internal system for lending between the numerous branches and sites of the University Library itself; and secondly, to support interlending among the libraries of all the independent Schools, Institutes and research departments which comprise the Edinburgh academic community and which are part of the ERCC network. For the individual user, the most likely immediate application is the use of the electronic mail facility to request and reserve items retrieved from the accessions list. One interesting feature of the ERCC network is that it can be accessed by users in two other universities, namely Glasgow and Strathclyde. The possibilities of this remain to be explored but the key fact is that users from other universities rather than libraries of other universities c