This paper describes how library operations can be integrated in a cross-platform programming It discusses the organizational and technical issues in planning and designing of macro applications from the technical services workstation. It then describes a variety of technical and public service macro applications. It shows the efficiency and ergonomic benefits of these customized programs. It concludes with an example of how PC-based macro-programs can populate Web-accessible server-side databases with ActiveX technologies. Programming Initiatives Background This article describes how library operations can be integrated, regardless of the systems in use, through what we call the environment. Two keys to a desktop-programmed are the technical services workstation and the macro, a computer program created either through recording series of keystrokes or--far better--through purpose-designed algorithms.(1) While such macros are commonly in use in many libraries within a single system, our article shows how these can be used to link and integrate systems to great functional advantage. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) we began developing cross-system macros in the context of our migration away from a first-generation system known as LCS/FBR, which had been largely developed in-house and used by a consortium of Illinois libraries.(2) While long-range plans call for moving to a state-of-the-art client/server-centered system, interim arrangements required the implementation of a turnkey telnet-based system, DRA Classic. It quickly became evident that the introduction of new technology would have a profound effect on the library as an organization. Indeed, existing structures and entrenched technologies affected implementation of the system and were in turn highly affected themselves by what was implemented. For that reason, this article looks at the programmed environment not only as a desktop phenomenon, but also as an organizational phenomenon. To have a deep understanding of the real impact desktop computer programming can have in a library, we begin with some organizational and technical issues and how they affected systems and services. Local Organizational Structure The UIUC Library is highly decentralized, made up of some forty-five semi-autonomous departmental libraries. Original cataloging had been decentralized in the mid-1980s; much acquisitions and serials check-in work was also done in the departmental libraries. Serials cataloging and copy cataloging were the respective responsibilities of an Office of the Principal Cataloger unit and of an Automated Services unit. Catalog maintenance was entirely centralized for systems reasons: changes to the consortial catalog could only be performed using hardwired terminals running SuperWylbur or WLN text-editing software. Besides using LCS/FBR, UIUC also maintained a variety of other systems, including IBM for acquisitions accounting and Innopac for serials check-in. All original cataloging was done through OCLC. Hence, multiple input was an overall feature of the configuration. Many parts of the system were not automated; many card files were still in use, especially since retrospective conversion was incomplete. Catalog Maintenance in a Pre-Windows (DOS) Environment UIUC had long grappled with the problem of carrying out catalog maintenance using an inflexible line-editing system. This situation has been documented by Clark and Chan and by Henigman.(3) A variety of computer programs written in BASIC and operating under DOS had been developed to facilitate accuracy and productivity in cataloging maintenance. Essentially, these programs guided inputters in the formatting of data and made possible the interface between the separate LCS and FBR databases. In implementing the new system, however, these programs became obsolete, since SuperWylbur, LCS, and FBR were all being retired. …
Accountants, take note! information highway and more specifically, the Internet--or the Net, as Internet aficionados call it--is vital to the health of the profession and your future income. This article will tell you why the Internet is important to you and how to use it to your advantage. Internet is one of the major arteries of the information highway. But before most people can maneuver onto the highway's entrance ramp, they'll have to endure some sizable potholes and detours. (They'll also have to learn some new words and phrases. See the glossary on page 61.) Right now the Internet is three things: * A nearly free communications channel. For example, a Net user in New York can dash off an electronic letter (e-mail) to a business associate in Australia. In fact, with the right software, he or she can even conduct a voice conversation with that person half way around the world. only charge is the price of a local phone call. In addition, some groups, such as the American Institute of CPAs, have arranged places on the Net where users can dialog--ask questions and share information and opinions (for more on this see the sidebar The AICPA Online, page 62, and Answers to Some Frequently Asked Questions about the Accountants Forum, page 80). * A vast storehouse of information--from the history of abacuses to the physiology of zebras--including accounting and financial information. However, the Net's utility often is obscured by the way the data are stored--tucked away in electronic libraries all around the world. Many users see the Internet as a giant library that never closes, lacks a card catalog, has all its books shelved helter-skelter and often classifies titles in an esoteric code. However, those in the know, able and willing to decipher codes such as http://www.servtech.com/re/acct.html, find the Internet the single greatest source of data available today. * An electronic storefront. Businesses as diverse as flower shops and airlines are setting up virtual shops on the Net, and their cash registers are beginning to ring. Marketing-savvy CPAs and consultants also are setting up shop on the Net--offering both free services as loss leaders and advertisements for their consulting expertise. Slowly the barriers to accessing the Net, uncovering data hidden in its libraries and setting up shop, are coming down. One of the Internet's most powerful utilities, the World Wide Web (WWW), can now be accessed and navigated relatively easily with a mouse. key point is that the Internet is becoming both user friendly and user vital. And unless accounting professionals recognize that the future of their business is information--finding it, creating it, formatting it, using it and distributing it--and become involved in this emerging technology, they may find themselves fending off fierce new competitors. THE CPA MARKET For accountants, the Net represents yet another opportunity--or challenge, depending on one's point of view: Although it's only a trickle right now, in the near future a considerable amount of business information will be transmitted by online systems. For example, clients can e-mail their general ledger transactions to their accountants' bookkeeping systems. Net-wise CPAs today download marketing information, prospectuses and newsletters. They also view instantly Standard & Poor's data, Securities and Exchange Commission filings, analysts' reports, financial statement data and earnings data on various industries. In addition, for those businesses that sell merchandise or services on the Net, the virtual cash register data also will be transmitted via the Net. In fact, one accounting software publisher, SBT Accounting Systems, just introduced a module called the Web Trader that handles such data. These are just some of the resources and business opportunities available now on the Internet. There's no telling what it will be able to offer in the future. …
DURING the past six years, a considerable amount of progress has been made, in certain directions, towards improving methods of library work. The improvements introduced have mostly come from the younger generation of English librarians, and it must also be added that this enthusiasm for betterment has been confined to a very small circle of young librarians. The majority of British librarians have apparently remained untouched by the movement towards more perfect methods compassed by their fellows, and it is doubtful if, in spite of the remarkably good work accomplished by a few “earnest men in various parts of the country, there is not, on the whole, a great preponderance of professional apathy in regard to burning questions of librarianship. The proof of this is only too obvious. Anyone who has watched the dwindling attendances at monthly Library Association meetings must have been struck by the fact as indicative of weakness or defectiveness somewhere. No professional association, with professional interests at stake, is going to languish, and practically sputter out, unless the members are bored, or indifferent, or in some way apathetic. For nearly four years, the interest in the Library Association meetings has been declining, and although the annual gatherings have been more or less successful, thanks to the energy of the provincial members, it must be remembered that the monthly meetings have been very badly attended, although their interest has been as great as heretofore—which, however, is not saying much. Recently, this lack of interest has assumed the form of a kind of epidemic rot, which has attacked other associations as well as the parent one. We hear of one kindred society having entirely suspended its meetings for months, while we read of another which can hardly get an attendance large enough to carry a vote of thanks to the speaker. When we hear it stated that the interest in the Library Association meetings is so languid that even the readers of papers do not trouble to appear, and that about half‐a‐dozen members is all that can be mustered on some occasions, it must be obvious to all that there is something radically wrong. We have heard it suggested that the Library Association meetings take place on an impossible day, and that the notice sent out is insufficient because only published in the Record, which nobody reads ! There may be an element of truth in these suggestions, but hardly enough to account for the all‐round apathy which undoubtedly exists. The stimulus derived from the Leeds meeting has apparently evaporated already, and beyond a decidedly more healthy response to the examination scheme of the Association, it is hard to understand in which direction activity of any kind exists. Comparing the professional work on this side of the Atlantic with that of the United States, it must be confessed that the comparison is very unfavourable to the British case. In America there are dozens of flourishing associations, counting their membership in thousands, while here, there are some half‐dozen associations, including the Library Association itself, which can only muster among them a little more than five hundred members. This is a poor record when one considers the possibilities, and if librarianship is to become a more powerful factor in the educational development of the future, it is evident that a strong effort must be made all round to double the membership of all the existing associations to begin with, and then to interest and retain the members who join by means of live meetings, publications, and other enterprizes. It will not suffice to rest on present achievements if librarianship is to be recognized as a greater power in the State than hitherto, and for this reason it behoves those librarians who have any “go” left in them, to try and pull up the existing machinery to a higher state of efficiency.