Blog 2B

Week 4

Kinner and Rigda trace the transition of Automated Library System to Integrated Library System in their article, “The Integrated Library System….” I find this article to be of interested because the path it follows, from ‘80s to today, is, in a way, the path of my life. A child of the ‘80s, one of Gen Y as it is called, I have observed and followed this library evolution without even realizing it.

“In libraries and the library automation industry, modernization, the first phase, occurred during the 1970s and 1980s. These library systems were “purpose built, stand-alone systems that solved a single problem using what we now consider primitive hardware, operating systems and software” (Andrews, 2007, p. 572). These ALSs were not designed to be interactive or even user friendly. They ran on main frames accessed via “dumb” terminals and were, for the most part, managed by information technology staff rather than library staff. These systems covered the core modules used by library staff: acquisitions, cataloging, circulation, and serials. They were more efficient than the paper systems libraries had been using for generations” (Kinner and Ridga, 2009).

When I was young, I browsed library shelves. I remember the few attempts that educators made at instructing me in the ways of the card catalog, a physical thing at the time (at least in the small West Virginia town where I grew up). It did not go very well. If there were computers in the library for public usage, I never saw any.

“The OPAC of the late 1980s became the face of the library, albeit in a nongraphical user interface; yet it was quite functional and a huge leap beyond the paper card catalog. The advent of the OPAC led libraries into the next phase of West and Lyman's procession, innovation. This phase witnessed significant experimentation, which involved the integration of the core library modules and the OPAC. This heralded the emergence of the ILS” (Kinner at al., 2009).

In the last ‘80s, my family relocated to VA Beach, VA. Their Central Public Library, a library whose size and scope I almost haven’t seen since, blew my mind. I remember using the computers at that library, hilariously dated by today’s standards, to locate what I was looking for. The user interfaces were text only, all of it a sickly shade of green with ASCII style borders comprised of repeating symbols. It was functional, but hardly more about it could be said. Most often, it existed only to show me that a particular book had not been returned in a span of time best measured in months. If it had any other features, I never found them.

“By the late 1990s, “the ILS was functionally complete with good MARC support but with varied network support” (Andrews, 2007, p. 573). The ILS of this time had a Web-based catalog, WebOpac, which was done quickly and was not very sophisticated. In essence, libraries were still dealing with an ILS as a “silo.” That means they were basically stand-alone units, yet with information being shared across library units. These systems were managed by library staffs, accessed over a network, and operated with a Web- or character-based interface, which ran on a single server” (Kinner et al., 2009).

A college student by this time, my experiences in the library were exclusively online. In fact, I rarely left my college library’s computer lab during crunch times except to grab the occasional physical text. Instead, services like JSTOR comprised the majority of my resource selections, as did web-based articles and research. The college library’s interface appeared as a web search engine – something I could open in the background as I typed in Microsoft Word or browsed in Internet Explorer.

Work Cited

Kinner, L. and Rigda, C. (2009). The Integrated Library System: From Daring to Dinosaur? Journal of Library Administration, 49(4), 401-417.