LIBRARY COMPUTERIZATION IN THE UNITED KINGDOM Library…联合王国图书馆图书馆电脑化.pdfVIP

116 LIBRARY COMPUTERIZATION IN THE UNITED KINGDOM Frederick G. KILGOUR: Director, Ohio College Library Center, Columbus, Ohio Library automation in the United Kingdom has evolved rapidly in the past three years . Imaginative, innovative development has produced novel techniques, some of which have yet to be put into practice in the United States. Of greatest importance is the growing cadre of highly effective librarians engaged in development. When the Brasenose Conference in Oxford convened in June 1966, there were represented only two operational library computerization projects from the United Kingdom : W. R. Maidment, Britains pioneer in library com- puterization, had introduced his bookform catalog at the London Borough of Camden Library in April 1965 ( 1); and M. V. Line and his colleagues at the University Library, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, had introduced an auto- mated acquisitions system just a year later (2). During the three years following the summer of 1966, British librarians moved rapidly into com- puterization and have made novel contributions which their American colleagues would do well to adopt. In the spring of 1969 there were more than a couple of dozen major applications operating routinely with per- haps another score being actively developed. The most striking develop- ment in the United Kingdom is computerization in public libraries, whose librarians are considerably more active than their colleagues in the United States; at least nine public libraries have computerization projects that are operational or under active development, and as already mentioned, it was a public library that led the way. The sources for this