Early Computers in Libraries

Information Overload and the Development of the Computerization of Catalogs

Early computers were large, complex clunkers that only a handful of people knew how to operate. As time progressed after World War II into the 1950s and 60s, they were still not very widely used but during the war and hereafter began to grow more refined and capable of organizing information. In the 1950s academic libraries in particular were beginning to struggle with maintaining the flood of information that was coming to them. Card catalogs and the typical methods at the time used for collection management and organization of information were proving to be slow, and not as effective and caused librarians to fall behind (Rayward, 2002). Erik P. Rau from Drexel University wrote an article that studied the efforts of three different attempts to conduct operations research that would help prove the need for automating library bibliographic control for academic libraries. These gentlemen were Philip Morse, from MIT, Michael Buckland at the University of Lancaster, and Ferdinand Leimkuhler at Purdue University (Rau, 2007).

Rau writes that computerizing the library was not straightforward, and a very complicated process. Not only did it face some criticism, with some claiming that librarians were "betraying their role as guardians of the paper document" but it also took careful planning, training, and willingness by the libraries as well as operations analysts. With the increase of information to store, protect and provide access to as well as an increase in library users looking to retrieve information, there had to be a better way for librarians to maintain control over everything. Studies were conducted by Morse, Buckland, and Lancaster during this time period to analyze how libraries currently operated, identified the issues, and this research conducted by all three of these gentlemen helped justify and create plans to computerize the library. It was concluded that libraries were perfect candidates for computerization because they were large, complex organizations that controlled multiple operations and resources (Rau, 2007).

Starting in the 1960s, systems were finally being created and implemented. The Library of Congress developed the MARC (MAchine Readable Catalog) as a standardized format for creating digital bibliographic records. This system is still in place today. By 1967 the Online Computer Library Center was created, and most libraries began finally using online catalogs. The OCLC helped enable easier Inter-library loan access and open access to information (Lamb, n.d.).

By the 1980s these systems were even more sophisticated, enabling Boolean searching, and librarians could automate circulation, acquisitions, cataloging, and more all under one system. Without computerization, and the librarians willingness to be trained and make the time consuming transition from paper to digital organization, it could have been detrimental to library services. It was also during this transition that libraries began to house different media outside of books such as video, and microfilm (Lamb, n.d).