Domsa Károlyné, Fekete Gézáné, Kovács Mária (szerk.): Gondolatok a könyvtárban / Thoughts in the Library (A MTAK közleményei 30. Budapest, 1992)

KÖNYVTÁR ÉS KORSZERŰSÉG – LIBRARY AND MODERNITY

E. Hakli there would be no future for library automation in the country if every library had to try to find the solutions alone. A better way seemed to be a joint development which could be reached with the help of a task force serving the needs of all research libraries because — it was obvious that individual libraries would not be able to acquire expertise nor resources enough to start a system development of their own — it was felt that there was a risk of the individual local systems being incompatible with each other — a similar policy had at that time been chosen in neighbouring Sweden; in the Swedish LIBRIS individual libraries were to be connected through telephone lines to a central database. To make a long story short, a fairly thorough study on future automation development in Finnish research libraries was prepared in 1972. Several solutions were examined but the Swedish approach was felt to be the most suitable also for Finnish conditions. In addition to the proposal to build up an integrated computerized library system, the report stressed the importance of compatibility with other library systems, a principle which since then has remained one of the main features of library automation in Finnish research libraries. In 1974 the Ministry of Education set up a task force and hired two systems analysts to start to prepare the proposed solution. Things, however, did not proceed according to plans. One could say that the plan was premature. Seen afterwards it was quite obvious, that Finland had not yet advanced far enough on its way towards a computerized society to discover the need of a large computer system for library use. Moreover, an economic depression did not allow investments of that scale in research libraries. So, the development work had to find other ways which were possible but which, nevertheless, were in line with the final goal. The task force gained more stability when it was transformed in 1979 into the Automation Unit of Finnish Research Libraries and gradually received more staff, at present 10 persons. While attempts to introduce an advanced solution for library automation had to be postponed, a pragmatic approach was chosen. All library automation systems need library catalogues in machine readable form, before anything else can be automated. It was, therefore, decided to start registering acquisitions in a number of libraries by using an offline procedure. Several "intelligent" devices of big physical size and little capacity (4 KB RAM, replaced later by more powerful PCs) were purchased as well as a programme package, which was made available by the British Library at a low prize. Cataloguers were working in a quasi on-line environment, bibliographic records were sent on diskettes to the State Computer Centre where they were processed and from where the participating libraries received their catalogues on microfiche regularly. These 142 Thoughts in the library"