Year: 1979
Type: article
Abstract: Networks function as change agents for libraries because they provide three critical services-research and development, capital ac£tuisition, and technology transfer mechanisms.Areas in which network participation has an impact on the academic library include the management of change, economic and attitudinal change, and cost accountability.Because of their early successes, networks have given rise to increased expectations for solutions to many critical library problems and for the equally rapid development of a national library network.wHEN THE NEW JOURNAL College & Research Libraries was issued in December 1939, a new era and new horizons for academic libraries, based on cooperation, improved bibliographic control, technology, and legislation, seemed imminent.Forty years have passed.We still seek improved technology.We still propose legislation.We still fund cooperative projects at a level that would have disgraced the board of a backward eighteenth-century poor-relief society.As for bibliographic control, we still hope that someone will invent a bibliographic Cuisinart that will automatically chop, mash, puree, and blend national standard bibliographic records into an inexpensive and tasty dish seasoned to the local palate.Having achieved at least a national, standard, machine-readable bibliographic record, after enormous expenditure of effort, local catalogers reverse the effort by working their exquisite local petit point, having refined bibliographic embroidery to a high art form.In many of our libraries we still treat users with benign neglect, as we concentrate on amassing collections accessible by methods with which Mr. Cutter would be thoroughly familiar.Nevertheless, there are glimpses of a new horizon.
Source: College & Research Libraries
Author: Barbara Evans Markuson
Institution: Library Network
Language: English
Subfield: Library and Information Sciences
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2090140949