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

130 The University of California Libraries
Cataloging. In operations such as cataloging, the use of such
systems can help reduce costs even more substantially. The most successful
on-line systems allow dozens and even hundreds of libraries to
share the work, so that only one library need catalog a title and the
rest can use the results without having to repeat the effort. In one
recent study of the largest such system (the Ohio College Library
Center), 91 percent of the users queried felt that the system allowed
catalogers to produce more work per unit of time, and 95 percent said
that clerical workers could increase production per unit of time. 20 In
another recent study, which covered all of the 47 original members of
OCLC, the author concluded that "original" cataloging had been all but
eliminated for the smaller libraries, and reduced to well below 20
percent of the total cataloging effort for other types. The time
required to catalog books and to produce sets of catalog cards had
been reduced in 91 percent of these libraries. 21
The University of California libraries are now experimenting
with two such systems, OCLC and a similar but smaller system based
at Stanford University, called BALLOTS (for Bibliographic Automation
of Large Libraries using an On-line Time-sharing System). The Ohio
College Library Center began as a non-profit corporation in 1967.
On-line cataloging services began in August 1971, and the number of
users has grown steadily since that time. In 1973, the OCLC membership
voted to allow libraries outside of Ohio to participate, and at
present the system is used by over 800 libraries in 44 states. In
the data base are almost 3 million records, including all of the MARC
(Machine-Readable Cataloging) records from the Library of Congress.
Participants key in a few letters or numbers (typically a few letters
of the author's name and a few letters of the title) for the
work they wish to process, and in a few seconds records corresponding
to this "search key" are displayed on the screen of the terminal.
20
Barbara Evans Markuson, "The Ohio College Library Center,"
Library Technology Reports, v. 12, no. 1 (January 1976), pp. 92-93.
21
Joe A. Hewitt, "The Impact of OCLC," American Libraries, v. 7,
no. 5 (May 1976), pp. 272-273.