llO journal of Library Automation Vol. 14/2 June 1981 

the desperation from a downtime situa-
tion. 

Great Neck Library is also planning to 
use the Apples for other functions, which, 
it is hoped, will be implemented soon. 

Multimedia Catalog: 
COM and Online 

Kenneth J. BIERMAN: Tucson Public Li-
brary, Tucson, Arizona. 

Like many public libraries, the Tucson 
Public Library (TPL) is closing its card 
catalog and implementing a vendor-
supplied microform catalog. Unlike most 
of these other libraries, however, the TPL 
microform catalog will not include', location 
or holding information. The indication of 
where copies of a particular title are 
actually available (i.e., which of the fifteen 
possible branch locations) will be available 
only by accessing a video display terminal 
connected to the online circulation and in-
ventory control system. 

Conceptually, the TPL catalog will be in 
two parts with each part intended to serve 
different functions.' The microform catalog 
(copies available in both film and fiche for-
mat) will fulfill the bibliographic function 
of the catalog. This catalog will contain 
bibliographic description and provide the 
traditional access points of author, title, 
and subject. The online catalog (online 
terminals are in place at all reference 
desks and a few public access terminals 
will also be available) will fulfill the 
finding or locating function of the catalog. 
This catalog will contain very brief biblio-
graphic description and will only be 
searchable by author, title, author/title, 
and call number, and will contain the cur-
rent status of every copy of every title in 
the library system (i.e., on shelf, checked 
out, at bindery, reported missing, etc.). 

Why did the Tucson Public Library 
make this decision? There are two major 
reasons: 

l. Accuracy . The location information, 
if provided in the microform catalog, 
would always be inaccurate and out 
of date. Assuming that the locations 
listed in the latest edition of the mi-

croform catalog were completely 
accurate when the catalog was first 
issued (an unrealistic assumption to 
begin with as anyone who has ever 
worked with location information at a 
public library with many branches 
well knows!), the location information 
would become increasingly less accu-
rate with each day because of the 
large number of withdrawals, trans-
fers, and added copy transactions 
that occur (more than 100,000 a 
year) . In addition, at any given time, 
one-quarter to one-third of the mate-
rials in busy branches are not on the 
shelf because they are either checked 
out or waiting to be reshelved . Thus, 
the microform catalog would indicate 
that these materials were available at 
specific branches when a significant 
percentage would in fact not be 
available at any given time. In short, 
even in the best of circumstances, 
easily half of the location information 
would be incorrect in telling a user 
where a copy of a title was actually 
available at that moment. 

2. Cost , A study done at the Tucson 
Public Library indicated that close to 
half of the staff time of the cataloging 
department was spent dealing with 
location and holding information. 
This time includes handling trans-
fers, withdrawals, and added copies. 
All of this record keeping is already 
being done as a part of the online 
circulation and inventory control sys-
tem (the Tucson Public Library has 
no card shelflist containing copy and 
location information but rather relies 
completely on the online file for this 
type of information). To "duplicate" 
the information in the microform 
catalog would cost an estimated 
$40,000 to $60,000 a year and the in-
formation in the microform catalog 
would never be accurate or up to 
date for the reasons outlined above . 

Figure 1 is a brief summary of how the 
bibliographic system will work. 

Would the system in figure 1 be im-
proved if holdings were included in the 
microform catalog? On the surface, the ob-
vious answer is yes-more information is 



Communications 111 

KNOWN-ITEM SEARCH 

(37 percent of TPL catalog 
use according to catalog use 
survey conducted at the 
TPL in 1971) 

User searches microform catalog by author and/or title. 

If user does not find desired bibliographic entry, user either 
leaves unsatisfied or goes to desk (or public access terminal) 
for help. 
If user finds the desired bibliographic entry, he/she writes 
down call number (or author for fiction) and proceeds to shelf. 

If user finds book on shelf he/she checks it out. 

If user does not find book on shelf, user either leaves unsat-
isfied or goes to desk (or public access terminal) to obtain 
holdings information or ask for help (put on reserve, borrow 
from another library, possible purchase of additional copies, 
etc.). 

SUBJECT SEARCH 
(63 percent of TPL catalog 
use by public according to 
catalog use survey con-
ducted at the TPL in 1971) 

User searches microform catalog. 
User writes down call number(s) and proceeds to shelf. 
If user finds appropriate material(s), he/she checks it out. 

If user does not find appropriate material he/she leaves unsat-
isfied or goes to desk for help (reference interview, etc.) . 

Fig. 1. Summary of How System Will Work. 

always better. But, if we examine the 
situation in depth, perhaps not. Let us 
look at some hypothetical situations. 

If the user is doing a search and does 
not find the desired entry/entries in the 
microform catalog, it makes no difference 
whether holdings are included in the cata-
log. The user will still either leave unsat-
isfied or go to the desk for help. 

If the user is doing a known-item search 
and finds the desired item and notes, and 
the agency he/she is at is listed as a hold-
ing agency, he/she will proceed to the 
shelf. If the desired material is found, 
fine . If not (because the material is 
checked out, reported missing, or with-
drawn), he/she will either leave unsatisfied 
or go to the desk (or public access termi-
nal) for help. 

If the user is doing a known-item search 
and finds the desired item in the micro-
form catalog but notes that the agency is 
not listed as a holding agency, what are 
his/her choices? The user can go away un-
satisfied without checking the shelves 
(although there may be a copy on the shelf 
because a copy may have been added to 
that agency since the microform catalog 
was last recumulated) or he/she can go to 
the desk (or public access terminal) to 
obtain help; here he/she will have access 
to the "real" holdings information--on the 

online system. The user could notice from 
the holdings in the microform catalog that 
another branch has the item and drive to 
the other branch. However, when the 
user gets there he/she may discover that 
the item is not available-information that 
could have been found in the online sys-
tem at the original branch if he/she had 
gone to the desk (or public access termi-
nal). · 

The purpose of the above exercise is to 
demonstrate that in all cases the user is 
still going to require access to the online 
catalog in order to determine holdings 
more accurately. With time, this access 
will become increasingly self-service 
through public access terminals. From the 
user's point of view, providing inaccurate 
holdings in the microform catalog does 
very little good and can actually do harm 
by leaving the impression that, if a library 
is listed as a holding library, that library 
will have the item (a false conclusion be-
cause of checkouts, reported missings, and 
withdrawals) or leaving the impression that 
if a library is not listed as a holding li-
brary, that library will not have the item 
(a false conclusion because a copy could 
have been added recently but that fact is 
not yet reflected in the microform catalog) . 

If the user is doing a subject search, 
holdings are of less value in the catalog 



112 journal of Library Automation Vol. 14/2 June 1981 

anyway because he is primarily getting 
suggested classification numbers in order 
to browse. 

The Tucson Public Library could not 
have made the above decisions if it did 
not have a complete online file of all its 
holdings (including even reference mate-
rials that never circulate). But since this 
data did exist (after a five-year bar-coding 
effort) and since more than forty online 
terminals were already in place through-
out the library system to access the online 
file, the decision not to include locations 
or holdings in the microform catalog 
seemed reasonable . In the longer-range 
future (1990?), it is very likely that the en-
tire catalog will be available online . In the 
meantime, the Tucson Public Library did 
not want to divide its resources maintain-
ing two location records, but rather 
wanted to concentrate resources in main-
taining one accurate record of locations 
available as widely as possible throughout 
the library system (by installing more 
online terminals for staff and public use). 
Was this decision a sound one? We don't 
know. The microform catalog has not yet 
been introduced for public use. By the 
end of this year we should have some pre-
liminary answers to this question. 

REFERENCES 

1. Robin W. MacDonald and J. McRee Elrod, 
"An Approach to Developing Computer 
Catalogs," College & Research Libraries 
34:202-8 (May 1973). 

A Structure Code for 
Machine Readable Library 
Catalog Record Formats 

Herbert H. HOFFMAN: Santa Ana College, 
Santa Ana, California. 

Libraries house many types of publica-
tions in many media, mostly print on pa-
per, but also pictures on paper, print and 
pictures on film, recorded sound on plastic 
discs, and others. These publications are 
of interest to people because they contain 
recorded information. More precisely said, 
because they contain units of intellectual, 
artistic, or scholarly creation that collec-

tively can be called "works." 
One could say simply that library mate-

rials consist of documents that are stored 
and cataloged because they contain works. 
The structure of publications into docu-
ments (or "books") and works, the clear 
distinction between the concept of the in-
formation container as opposed to the con-
tents, deserves more attention than it has 
received so far from bibliographers and li-
brarians. 

The importance of the distinction be-
tween books and works has been hinted at 
by several theoreticians, notably Lubetz-
ky . However, the idea was never fully de-
veloped. The cataloging implications of the 
structural diversity among documents 
were left unexplored. As a consequence, 
librarians have never disentangled the two 
terms book and work . From the Paris 
principles and the MARC formats to the 
new second edition of the Anglo-American 
Cataloguing Rules, the terms book and 
work are used loosely and interchange-
ably, now meaning a book, now a work 
proper, now part of a work, now a group 
of books. 

Such ambiguity can be tolerated as long 
as each person involved knows at each 
step which definition is appropriate when 
the term comes up. But as libraries ease 
into the age of electronic utilities and 
computerized catalogs based on records 
read by machine rather than interpreted 
by humans, a considerably greater measure 
of precision will have to be introduced 
into library work. As one step toward that 
goal an examination of the structure of 
publications will be in order. 

The items that are housed in libraries, 
regardless of medium, are of two types. 
They are either single documents, or they 
are groups of two or more documents. 
Items that contain two or more documents 
are either finite items (all published at 
once, or with a first and a last volume 
identified) or they are infinite items 
(periodicals, intended to be continued in-
definitely at intervals). Schematically, 
these three types of bibliographic items in 
libraries can be represented as shown in 
figure l. 

It should be noted that all publications, 
all documents, all bibliographic items in li-