The University of California Libraries: A Plan for Development (1977)

102 The University of California Libraries
firms such as Lockheed and Systems Development Corporation for University
use of their on-line data base services, which are becoming
increasingly popular. The information provided by these commercial
services includes citations from bibliographic tools such as
Psychological Abstracts, Dissertation Abstracts, Historical Abstracts,
the Science Citation Index, and its companion, the Social Sciences
Citation Index. The National Library of Medicine also provides an
on-line service, called MEDLINE, for searching citations in medical
literature. And the New York Times offers on-line access to virtually
all articles published in that newspaper since 1969, plus abstracts
from over 60 additional newspapers and journals.
Reference librarians in the University's libraries make all of
these services directly available to library users. The librarians
receive requests, interview patrons to determine their information
needs, suggest search strategies and appropriate data bases to be
searched, formulate the actual searches, and then deliver the results,
usually in the form of a printed bibliography. If necessary, a followup
discussion between the patron and the librarian may be held to
insure that the search results are responsive to the patron's needs.
These data base services have proved a boon to researchers,
faculty and students alike, but they do of course require extensive
training for the librarians and additional staff time. The CIS unit
mentioned earlier provides most of the training, not only for UC
librarians but for staff members from CSUC and other institutions as
well; periodic seminars and training sessions are held in different
parts of the state, and individualized training is also offered. For
the campus libraries, however, the staff time required to provide the
services has become a growing problem. The value of the services is
unquestioned, and many researchers now depend on them routinely, but
additional personnel have not been added to handle the workload. More
staff will be needed if the libraries are to take full advantage of
the potential for increased service which the new technology offers,
and Chapter IX speaks to this need. More extensive use of collections
not on the home campus, as discussed in Chapter IV, is also likely to
require more reference staff, as is the growing demand from off-campus
users for service.