[12845] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: What is required for information access?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Seth Rothberg)
Tue May 31 15:53:57 1994
Date: Tue, 31 May 1994 10:34:54 -0400
From: Seth Rothberg <SROTH@ucsvax.ucs.umass.edu>
To: com-priv@psi.com
X-Vms-To: @com-priv
Bruce,
Thanks for taking the time to respond to my posts. It's always great to hear
what's happening in other libraries.
The Jones Library in Amherst, MA, where I work, belongs to a consortium of
Western Mass Libraries. We buy terminals from a group called CW Mars and keep
our catalog and patron databases on a Tandem (I think) mainframe. The
mainframe runs a very buggy version of CARL software--apparantly the port to
the Tandem has been more difficult than expected.
We don't have any PACs yet, which is really shameful, but we've got a
committee deciding now what the various screens should look like, how
materials should be entered, etc . The committee meetings, I hear, are a
series of disagreements between Tech Services and Circulation. I'm in
Circulation so I won't say anymore.
My vision for the library goes beyond that. I'd like to see us set up
something along the line of the Freenets which so many Ohio towns offer.
Access would be via modem or at the library itself. I'd also like to see us
buy some good computers for public use. Right now we have an old Apple IIe.
It works, gets lots of use, but we would do better with computers that run
Windows, some modern word processing and spreadsheet programs.
Oh, I can dream!
Seth
