A LIBRARIAN'S EXPERIENCE IN THE USE OF CDS/ISIS: A BRIEF DESCRIPTION. Prepared by Nancy St. John

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1 ECONOMIC COMMISSION FOR LATIN AMERICA AND THE CARIBBEAN Subregonal Headquarters for the Carbbean CARIBBEAN DEVELOPMENT AND CO-OPERATION COMMITTEE UNITED NATIONS EDUCATIONAL, SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL ORGANIZATION CARSTIN Tranng Workshop/Semnar on Network Development n the Carbbean Port of Span, Trndad ' 3-14 December 1984 Dstr. LIMITED LC/CAR/L.13 6(SEM. 1/ 9) CDCC/CARSTIN/84/9 ' 3 December 1984 ORIGINAL: ENGLISH A LIBRARIAN'S EXPERIENCE IN THE USE OF CDS/ISIS: A BRIEF DESCRIPTION Prepared by Nancy St. John UNITED NATIONS ECONOMIC COMftUSSION FOR LATIN AMERICA Otts lor ttacsftfceaa

2 A Lbraran's Experence n the Use of CDS/ISIS: a bref descr pt on by Nancy St. John It has been my good -fortune to have been workng at the Carbbean Development Bank Lbrary, at the tme when the Management of that Organsaton took the decson to purchase a computer, so that the actvtes could be automated. The Computer Analyst, who was at that tme at the Bank, came to me, to ask f any of the Lbrary's fles could be automated and f so dd I know of any sutable programme for ths purpose. I suggested that he look nto the possblty of obtanng the CDS/ISIS Programme from Unesco. I ponted out to hm that I had understood that the only Computer on whch the programme would run was an IBM. He sad that ths was the'hardware that the Bank 'was lookng at, and that ths factor would surely nfluence the fnal decson. «He mmedately contacted Unesco about the possblty of obtanng the programme for use at the Bank's Lbrary, and receved a postve response. A great deal of correspondence ensued and fnally Unesco sent a Consultant to CDB to advse on the matter. m Suffce t s to say, that the IBM Computer was purchased and that due to the nterest of Aubrey Garca, our

3 u. Computer Analyst, plans proceeded smoothly -for the nstallaton of ISIS. Regrettably, as -far as I was concerned, Aubrey resgned to take up a post at UWI, St. Augustne, and so was not there when ths plan became a real ty. However, by ths tme, Clfford Wllabus had joned the staff, and t was he who proceeded to Pars, to be traned n the use and nstallaton of ISIS. He also returned full of enthusasm and put hs head together wth those of the Lbrary Staff, to dentfy the needs of that Department. I must state that at ths tme, fortunately for the Lbrary, the other Departments were not yet ready to proceed wth ther actvtes, and so t^e Lbrary was able to have the complete attenton of Mr. Wllabus. It would be remss of me not to make publc menton of how dedcated Clfford was to pursung the solutons to the problems of nformaton storage and retreval as appled to documerrtat on. Documentaton was not hs dscplne, and he developed an nterest to the extent that I feel that he has a natural flar that should make hm ^»n nformaton specalst. j The exctng part of the cu Lhu automaton of a Documentaton Centre was now begnnng. At ths tme^one of I my colleagues n the Lbrary World called me and gave me a clppng on automaton that that he had just attended, he had come across at a Meetng I wll share t wth you and comment on t as I go on.

4 3 The artcle stated that there were s:-: stages through whch a Lbraran goes durng the computersaton of a lbrary. 1. Euphora 2. Growng doubts 3. Mass con-fuson 4. Hunt -for the gulty 5. Dsmssed of the nnocent 6. Promoton of the unnvolved My frend dentfed that I was n Stage 1 wth all my enthusasm and exctement at what was happenng n the Lbrary, and laughngly suggested that I take note of Stages 4 and 5. I must pont out before you form the wrong concluson, that I left the Bank when I reached Stage 2. Serously though, there were^and I, would say that there stll are, many challenges to face n the automaton of a lbrary. I would lke to look at these ndvdually. THE INSTALLATION OF TH SYSTEM ITSELF. The Programmer n the Computer Unt, must be totally commtted and receptve to the needs of the Lbrary and must be prepared to work wth the Lbraran. Both people must recognse ther lmtatons wth respect to ther ndvdual felds of endeavour and t s only by complete co-operaton that ther collectve goal w11 be acheved.

5 Ths perod s crucal to the success o-f the total I venture. It s a perod when many decsons need to be taken and care-fully debated to ensure that they are both I realstc and workable. I From the Lbraran,s pont of vew, t s necessary to decde what output s requred, such as: a) wll t be possble to have access at all tmes for on-lne searches?! necessary? b) f (a) s feasble, then s a card catalogue stll c> from what date shall the Lbrary attempt to put ts data on-lne, or wll the staff try to do retrospectve catalogu ng? d) what back-up measures wll be taken n the event of an extended loss of power so that data wll not be lost? e) wll the lbrary have a daly prnt-out? f)' wll weekly cumulatons be prnted, or wll monthly lsts of acqustons be adequate? I g) what arrangement of such lsts wll be decded on, ISIS no., wth author, ttle and subject ndexes, or any other arrangement consdered sutable? h) wll the programme produce bblographes on request? '! ' ) how many access ponts wll be avalable for search ng?!.! 1; I j) should the loans system be automated?

6 r k) should the acqustons process.e. orderng of books and documents be automated?.1) should the malng lst be put on computer? m> should personnel records be put on computer as wel 1? n) should a perodcals holdngs lst be automated? o)- wll t be possble to obtan a current awareness lst of perodcal artcles separate from the normal lst of new acqustons? These are 'some of the most obvous questons that wll requre decsons and obvously a great need for co-operaton between the Programmer and Lbraran. The Lbraran s gong to have to dscuss the requred format and assst the Programmer n the effort to produce what j.s needed. There s no pont expectng the Programmer to understand our needs, as s there no pont the Programmerexpectng that the Lbraran s gong to understand all of the problems nvolved n fulfllng seemngly unreasonable requests as far as the Programmer s concerned. Lbrarans tend to be stcklers for detals and arrangements that can seem very unnecessary to the unntated. A warnng s ndcated here, the Lbraran must realse that, the Computer, fantastc tool though t s, wll only, produce what s put nto t, and decsons must be taken wth ths n mnd. What therefore, does the Lbraran really need when he or she elects to 'go computer?' The

7 basc desre s, I consder, the provson of a better servce for users. Ths beng made feasble by the possblty of retrevng nformaton far more quckly and far more exhaustvely byj a computer than by manual processes. ^ However, to acheve ths goal, effectve tranng of staff must be mplemented, so that the best possble use s made of automaton. An nadequately traned person wll defeat the whole objectve of the exercse, and only produce the before mentoned stage of 'confuson,' thus makng the chance of stages 4, 5, and 6 a realty. WHAT WAS DECIDED AT CDB In the ntal stages, t was decded to proceed only wth puttng our data on lne. Actng on advce from one who had gone through the automaton process, a date was chosen as a cut-off pont from manual catalogung. It was also decded that no retrospectve catalogung would be attempted at that tme, snpe one would forever be tryng to catch up wth oneself. There was one excepton to ths however, and that was the Documents of the CDB. These have all been ncluded n the data base, and I thnk the reasons are too obvous for menton. To make ths as straghtforward as possble, a specal staff member was assgned to ths task, so that she would not. become confused.

8 / The next step was to create a Perodcals Holdngs Lst l whch would provde addtonal nformaton on the source from whch a perodcal was obtaned, the prce and the date of renewal of subscrpton. In addton to these two actvtes, t was agreed that a Malng Lst should be put on the Computer, whch would then produce labels for postage. Ths was compled for all the malng actvtes of the Bank. It was so created that the Lbrary could retreve the addresses relevant to us, the TEU/TIS could do the same, as could the Bank's Document Offcer, etc WHAT HAPPENED DURING THE FIRST YEAR All seemed to be gong very well as far as we were concerned, but really none of us were fully aware of the true power the the system. To all of us t was lke a great adventure, we dscovered somethng new every day, but we were dong thngs the complcated way, not realsng what we could really do. After about sx months, Unesco sent down a Consultant to see how well we were dong and to nstall a new edton of ISIS. In fact CDB Lbrary was the frst lbrary, apart from the Unesco Headquarters Lbrary to receve ths system. Mchael Sherwood was very famlar wth the ISIS system snce hfe? had nstalled t n Thaland at the Asan Insttute of Technology.

9 s Together, he and Clfford Wllabus sorted out the nstallaton of ths new. edton, and Mchael gave the Lbrary a good sesson n usng t successfully. From here on, we were on our way, and wth Clfford's unstntng support after Mchael had left, we started nputtng data at a pretty rapd rate. We were gettng daly prnt outs whch we were able to check, and recevng a monthly acquston lst. The Computer Unt was prntng multple copes for us, wh:'ch we were able to dstrbute nternally and also to a selected lst of nterested nsttutons externally. Soon after, we decded to ndex current perodcals havng artcles on or about., the Carbbean Regon, so that we could offer a Current Awareness Servce to our Staff. I mght add that ths Servce was well receved and much apprecated. WHAT ABOUT PROBLEMS? 4 Yes, there were problems. We dscovered that the degree of checkng could not be too thorough, as errors crept n, both n the typng and n the completon of the Bblographc Record Card. ; The computer s so precse, that punctuaton marks and spaces could create confuson n the flng of the records. A smple example of what happened:! take an author's name, Smth, E. G. typed Smth, E.G. and the computer would never put the two together. Ths

10 1 happened qute a bt, because we had two data nput operators and one used the -frst style and the other the second. Con-fuson! When ths was dscovered by checkng the author -fle, a great many correctons had to be made. Smlarly, we had our problems wth the descrptor -fle. In addton, because everyone was unfamlar wth the new methodology, the cataloguers frequently left out felds that needed to be completed MY PERSONAL CONCLUSIONS I enjoyed workng wth a computer, I apprecated what I found the capabltes of CDS/ISIS to be. Now that I have left the Bank, I must admt that I mss the computer a great deal. It was fascnatng, challengng and sometme frustratng. However, t s the way to go, and I realsed that we were undoubtedly able to offer a much better servce to our users. We could supply bblographes, vrtually on demand, and I am sure that all lbrarans wll agree that that s.tremendous advantage to have. Much more s stll to A be done and snce I left, I beleve that the Issue system s n the process of beng computersed. CDS/ISIS s avalable from IJnesco, t s an extremely powerful tool for nformaton storage and retreval. It s worth your whle to fnd out more about t from Unesco and f possble to obtan t for use n your lbrary or

11 documentaton centre^it s to be hoped that a verson o-f ISIS sutable -for the Mcrocomputer wll soon be avalable to us, and then the whole Informaton World wll have been revolut on z ed.