lib-s-mocs-kmc364-20141005043630 63 TECHNICAL COMMUNICATIONS ANNOUNCEMENTS With this issue we begin the process of shifting the emphasis and content of Technical Communicatiom. Some of the newsletter features of Technical Commu- nicatiom will be dropped due to the fact that as a quarterly publication it cannot be satisfactorily used to disseminate cer- tain kinds of temporal information (e.g., short lead-time announcements, notifica- tion of institutes, seminars, meetings, etc.) . Instead, brief articles, letters, or comments on lOLA articles, and perti- nent information about technical develop- ments will hopefully assume a larger per- centage of the allotted pages for Tech- nical Communications. The ISAD Edi- torial Board, in approving these changes, voiced the opinion that Technical Com- munications would be much more useful as a result. Concise technical communications and information notes featuring any aspect of the application of computers, systems analysis, or other technological develop- ments (hardware, software, or tech- niques) pertinent to libraries are solicited. The design is also meant to provide a forum for the more rapid dissemination of information that will sometimes serve as the basis for the longer, more detailed articles which are published in lOLA. Thus, the salient findings in a study, or the important developments taking place in a project or ongoing operation can be made known long before they might oth- erwise be brought out in a formal presen- tation. These changes should become evident by the March 1974 issue, and to insure that this type of material does begin mak- ing its appearance, please send your let- ters notes and technical communications , , . to the editor of Technical Commumca- tions. (See cover sheet, Page II.) TECHNOLOGICAL INROADS CATV Library Application In Mobile, Alabama, a cable television subscriber can telephone the public li- brary's reference department and turn to the library service channel to see the in- formation requested over the telephone. The library installation costs are reported to be less than $500. The spectrum of patrons making use of the service include financial analysts (looking at charts and graphs) , illustrators and advertising personnel (obtaining pic- torial representations) , technicians re- questing information from manuals, teach- ers, and even tourists looking for direc- tional information. Business applications loom important in the future and are already underway. It is now possible to offer a centralized mi- crofilm storage with coded access to vari- ous documents. Similarly it was noted that retrieval and transmission of videotapes for the use of realtors will be explored. This would provide real estate agents with the ability to give a videotape tour of properties for sale. Transmission time of a tape could be metered and billed to the appropriate realtor. Other possible applications encompass such library activities as story hours, in- struction for children in schools, and live telecast of library functions. (Extracted from The American City, March 1973) PEACESAT (Pan Pacific Education and Communication Experiments by Satellite) Populations in the Pacific Basin are of- ten small in size and divided by great dis- tances, making it impossible for many to sustain adequate levels of educ ation, health care, and technically based ser- vices. Inadequate communications consti- tute a principal barrier to development. 64 Journal of Library Automation Vol. 6/1 March 1973 Pan Pacific Education and Communi- cation Experiments by Satellite (PEACE- SAT) is a demonstration project in which selected educational and medical institu- tions in the Pacific Basin are linked by means of communication satellite relay. Voice and facsimile are sent and received by each location in the system. Slow-scan television and teletype will be used at some locations. The PEACESAT project is not a per- manent service. It is a pilot demonstra- tion to provide experience in the use of long distance transmission on which to base the design of future telecommunica- tion services. Its objectives are to increase the quality of education in the Pacific by facilitating sharing of scarce, costly re- sources; to improve professional services in sparsely populated areas through tele- communication support; and, generally, to assist in applying the potential of satellite technology to the solution of domestic so- cial problems and peaceful world develop- ment. The system is unique in the world. The satellite used is the ATS-1 operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Admin- istration. Only established and tested tech- nology is used in the system. The costs to participants are small. Exchanges conduct- ed through the PEACESAT facilities in- volve two-way communication, two or more locations interconnected at one time, and often many users at each location en- gaged in dialogue with users at other ter- minals. The format and content are deter- mined by the users. The idea of using satellite relay to fa- cilitate communication for educational, health, and community services in remote areas of the Pacific Basin was proposed in 1969 to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration by Dr. John By- strom, professor of communication at the Manoa campus of the U Diversity of Ha- waii. A start on the project was made in December 1970 when President Harlan Cleveland approved a grant from the U Di- versity's Innovative Program. In February 1971, NASA approval for use of the ATS-1 was granted. Dr. Paul Yuen, pro- fessor of electrical engineering, and ICa- tashi Nose, associate professor of physics, had two prototype ground terminals avail- able when the Federal Communications Commission approved licenses for the ex- periment. In Phase I of the project, beginning April 1971, ground terminals construct- ed at the university were successfully test- operated and utilized between Hawaii Community College in Hila and the Ma- noa campus of the University of Hawaii. The Hawaii State Legislature emphasized its support of the project by appropriating $75,000 in April 1971. The international network began in Jan- uary 1972 with terminals at Wellington Polytechnic in Wellington, New Zealand, and the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, joining the system. Additional terminals have been established at Maui Community College, Kahului, Maui ( Ha- waii); Papua New Guinea Institute of Technology, Lae, PNG; the University of South Pacific Centre, Nuku'alofa, Tonga ; and the Department of Education, Pago Pago, American Samoa. Operating ter- minals are being established at Saipan and Truk in the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. The project is administered by the Uni- versity of Hawaii with the assistance of the Governor's Committee on Pan Pacific Educational Communications, appointed by Governor John Burns and headed by UH President Harlan Cleveland. A Facul- ty Advisory Committee assists develop- ment at the University of Hawaii. Recom- mendations for long range planning in medical research are provided by a Med- ical Communications Study Advisory Committee Project director is Dr. John Bystrom, assisted by James McMahon, system coordinator. Technical design and development is under the direction of Dr. Paul Yuen. Key to the system is a small inexpensive ground terminal designed and constructed at the university by Katashi Nose. Each of the educational institutions which have terminals have their own au- tonomous staff and organization which op- erate the equipment and develop educa- tional uses of the system. Management of the PEACESAT terminal on the Manoa campus is under Carol Misko, terminal manager. During its relatively short existence, the PEACESAT system has been utilized in a wide variety of educational and scien- tific programs. The East-West Center used a receiving station on the ocean liner Pres- ident Wilson to conduct orientation ses- sions with its arriving grantees. Hamilton Library on the Manoa campus has demon- strated exchange of materials with other locations via PEACESAT. Doctors of the Pacific Research Section of the National Institute of Health consult with doctors at the Bethesda, Maryland, National Li- brary of Medicine. The Hawaii Coopera- tive Extension Service has used the system to conduct seminars with specialists from New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, and Hawaii lo- cations. Faculty and students at the various campuses of the system have utilized the communication channels made available by PEACESAT. A few among the many disciplines they represent are political science, English, Spanish, education, In- donesian languages, physics, oceanogra- phy, computer science, journalism, urban planning, and speech-communication. It was the PEACESAT system which car- ried the world's first regularly scheduled class of instruction via satellite. Within the Pacific Basin keen interest has been shown in the development of this project, as evidenced by discussion of PEACESAT at meetings of the South Pacific Forum and the South Pacific Com- mission. The PEACESAT network recent- ly provided the means for South Pacific poets to exchange their works with one another. Amonv those joining in the well- received poetry series was the poet lau- reate of Tonga. In April 1972 the National Library of Medicine awarded the University of Ha- waii a contract for a study of medical net- working in the Pacific, incorporating dem- onstrations of library and professional ex- changes. Hours of operation for the network are currently 9:00-10:00 a.m. and 4:30- 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday {Hon- olulu time). The Manoa Exchange Cen- ter is located in George Hall (212) on the Technical Communications 65 campus of the University of Hawaii. PEACESAT Project, Program in Commu- nication, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822. Phones: ( 808) 948-8848, ( 808) 948-8771, RCA Telex #723597. Tomorrow's Library: Spools of Tape Libraries with ranks of musty tomes and files of catalog cards may be difficult to flnd in the future. Books probably will be in museums; libraries will be on spools of computer tape. Library users might push a button for a no-deposit, no-return paperback printout, instead of standing in line for a hardback from the stacks. Movement in these directions has al- ready begun at the University of Georgia where a staff of 110 and $9 million of computer hardware provide the following type of service: A professor sits before a CRT and types out the chemical names of DDT on the keyboard. Almost imme- diately, the television screen above the keyboard displays a list of 176 scientific references to DDT. This information is the result of an elec- tronic search of about 40,000 issues of Chemical Abstracts, a title compilation on computer tape of all published scientifl.c papers in chemistry. Similar abstracts are available in other scientific fields, and three large foundation grants will enlarge these holdings to include literature in en- gineering, education, and the humanities. The information retrieval system allows a user to "browse as he would in a li· brary." But the browsing is done through one of 37 remote terminals. The number of remote terminals is expected to more than quadruple in future years, giving a total of some 200 individual outlets. (Ex- tracted from CoUege Management) LIBRARY PROJECTS AND PROGRAMS Microfiche Catalog by Tulsa City-County Library The Tulsa City-County Library com- puter output microfiche catalog was pub- lished in early March, according to Ruth Blake, director of technical services, Tul- sa City-County Library. The catalog is in 66 Journal of Library Automation Vol. 6/1 March 1973 register-index format. The register, ar- ranged by number, contains full biblio- graphic information for each title. Adult and juvenile indexes contain brief biblio- graphic entries, location information, and a reference to the register number of each title. Both indexes are in dictionary form, with authors, titles, and subjects in a sin- gle alphabet. Minnesota Bio-Medical Mini-Computer Project The University of Minnesota Bio-Med- ical Library has received a $361,729 three-year grant from the National Li- brary of Medicine to provide support dur- ing the development of a low cost, stand alone, library dedicated computer system. The system will employ on-line terminals for data entry and file query functions, and will be based on an integrated system design of a processing system which would be suitable for use in other librar- ies of a similar size. The premise of the development is that an integrated acquisi- tions, accounting, in-process control sys- tem for all library materials coupled with an on-line catalog/ circulation control sys- tem can be operationally affordable by a library or system of libraries in the 200,000 volume class using its own com- puter system. A Digital Equipment Corp. PDP 11/ 40 system has been selected. The CPU fea- tures 16K core, 16 bit word, power fail/ automatic restart, programmable real time clock, extended instruction set, and mem- ory management option which permits ac- cess to 124K of memory. A DEC writer data terminal will be used as console and initial terminal on the system. Two 9 channel 800 bpi tape drives and one 40 million character moving head disk pack drive comprise the system's initial mass storage. A 132 column, 96 character set line printer completes the initial hardware configuration. Before the system is in- stalled, suitable CRT type terminals and communications interfaces will be chosen. Six of these terminals will be required when the system is fully operational. Memory expansion in the CPU and addi- tional mass storage may be acquired de- pending upon needs, although the design efforts will be to minimize the amount of core required for the system and most ef- ficiently use the mass storage available. One of the problems of using a mini- computer system to service an interactive on-line library system is a lack of a suit- able operating system which can require minimal residency in core, yet contain only the functions needed on a library sys- tem. Current timesharing operating sys- tems provide some parts of a system, such as device handlers, but require too great allocation of core, or programming in a compiler level language such as BASIC. This approach has been deemed unsatis- factory if system costs for hardware are to be kept reasonable. During the development period a PDP 11140 DOS operating system will be used to assist in writing a hybrid operat- ing system and utilities using the PDP 11/40 ASSEMBLER language. Also un- der development will be the file design, the system common modules, and system dictionary. These elements of the system will be required to then design and pro- gram the individual system applications. Since the grant does not provide any support for data conversion, the circula- tion application will be developed and in- stalled for the reserve materials. These only number a few thousand and involve short loan periods and other complexities which will provide an excellent test of a circulation control system for general li- brary-wide use. Other application systems, such as acquisitions and serials already are computer supported and therefore have existing machine-readable data files. The project staff includes Glenn Brud- vig, director of the Bio-Medical Library as principal investigator; Audrey N. Grosch of the University Libraries Sys- tems Division as project director and the following systems specialists: Bob Den- ney, Carl Sandberg, Eugene Lourey, and Don Norris. PERTINENT RECENT PUBLICATIONS Nationwi.de Survey of Library Automation -Phase I. The California State University and Colleges has published the final report of Phase I of its nationwide survey of library automation. This comprehensive survey performed for the Chancellor's Office-Li- brary Systems Project by Inforonics, Inc. covers over twenty-five library automation projects in the United States and Canada. Those interested in obtaining a copy should write, enclosing a check in the amount of $5.00 (Californians remember the 6 percent tax) to Chancellor's Office; The California State University and Col- leges; 5670 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 900; Los Angeles, CA 90036. A Survey of Commonplace Problems in Library Automation, compiled by Frank S. Patrinostro. This survey documents actual library experiences concerning problems encoun- tered, their causes, and what steps were taken to solve the problems. Order from LARC Press, Ltd.; 105-117 W. Fourth Avenue; Peoria, IL 61602. Survey of Commercitdly Available Com- puter-Readable Bibliographic Data Bases, edited by John H. Schneider, Marvin Technical Communications 61 Gechman, and Stephen E . Furth. Pub-· lished by ASIS. This reference tool provides descrip- tions of eighty-one machine-readable data bases. Key Papers on the Use of Computer- Based Bibliographic Services, edited by Stella Keenan. Published jointly by the National Federation of Abstracting and Indexing Services (NFAIS) and ASIS. Contains selected papers on the use and evaluation of computer-based ser- vices. Cost Reduction for Special Libraries an.d Information Centers, edited by Frank Sla- ter. Published by ASIS. The four sections of the book cover an overview of recent literature on costing for 1ibraries; general cost reduction con- siderations; show and tell-special cost reduction efforts; and real costs for infor- mation managers. (The three preceding publications are available from Publications Division, American Society for Information Science, 1140 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Washing- ton, DC 20036.)