Conference tallis::celt

    Re .0: And who's going to enter all these marvellous old books in ASCII
    files? Do you have a couple hundred million dollars available to fund
    the umpteenth poor typers who're going to feed the researchers of the
    future with uncounted unnoticeable typos and errors?
    			Denis.

    Yes, funding anything is the real bug-a-boo.  But the problem of
    finding things in these libraries is not going to go away...  I read a
    recent article in the "Economist" (DEC23, 1989) which discusses some
    of the attempts of the world's great libraries to stay ahead of the
    deluge of information, (space to house, never mind prevent the decay of
    these books is costly too).  Are there answers?    Lets hear from a few
    of you as to your ideas of what should be available from university
    libraries?  National Libraries?   Is there a need to "weed" out
    materials? If so, who decides?   What sections of a library collection
    should be made available in electronic form only...(indexes, union
    catalog, etc.)  Who will fund any conversions to electronic form?  It 
    might be more interesting to ask, "who will fund keeping library
    systems as they currently exist?"  
    
    What is possible today for libraries...what does the future hold.
    
    Lets hear some suggestions on "what" is possible today...what the
    future holds? 
    
    Do we really have to stay with the idea of a "book" being as "bound,
    sheets of paper"   
    
    Cheers,
    Joan

    
    Actually, when I was in Dublin, the geneological department was putting
    many of their records up on computer.  They wanted to save as much as
    possible because the paper documents are starting to deteriorate.
    
    Remember with SCANNER technology many texts can just be read in rather 
    than retyped...there may be some hope!
    

    I believe the technologies will (almost are) there to do a lot of the
    things that we thought impossible a short while ago (even 5 years ago).
    And as you say, one of the reasons for moving ahead with "electronic"
    versions, is, (Economist, 1990).."pooks printed before 1830 on rag
    paper stay flexible and tough, books printed since the mid-nineteenth
    century on wood-pulp paper are being steadily eaten away by natural
    acids.  Atthe [U.S.] Library of Congress, about 77,000 books out of the
    stock of 13m enter the endangered category every year.  Fairly soon,
    about 40% of the books in the biggest research collections in America
    will be too fragile to hande."
    
    And of course, the even greater impetus is the cutting of budgets for
    libraries in America and Britain in the 70s and 80s.  So, when things
    get really uncomfortable, (i.e., not enough money, more and more
    information to be handled, buildings and books deteriorating, and
    library users (computer literate generation?) seeking more automated 
    services...something has to give.
    
    From what I gather Oxford University (and its associated libraries)
    doesn't even have its card catalog automated... Does anyone have a name
    of someone I could contact at Oxford to get more info on where they are
    with something like this...plus I'd love to find out how their scholars
    conduct research on Shakespeare?    I know Harvard has their union
    catalog automated...and they have the complete works of Shakespeare on
    line...but and there is some experimentation with CD-ROM, but I don't 
    know much more on it.   (I know that Digital has sponsored a number of 
    university research projects related to information access and
    management...such as Project Mercury at Carnegie Mellon University, and 
    a few others...)
    
    Can anyone tell me what U.S. library is comparable to the British
    Library...since it looks like British Library and the Bibliotheque
    Nationale in Paris are massive libraries..would they be comparable to
    the U.S. Library of Congress library  (repository library)?
    
    As for the geneological department putting their records up on
    computer, I had read that also in another notes file...I'll have to go
    back and look for it to get some more details..
    
    Cheers,
    Joan

Hi Joan,

>>>Can anyone tell me what U.S. library is comparable to the British
Library....etc.

The British Library is similar to the Library of Congress library in that it is
a repository library. Infact there are five repository libraries in Great
Britain. These are:

British Library

University of Cambridge Library

Univ. of Oxford library (The Bodleian)

National library of Wales, Aberstywyth, Dyfed (Name of the head librarian is
Dr. Brynley Roberts - if that's any help). They use the Library Of Congress
system here by the way.

National libary of Scotland.

As regards Oxford library, my sister studied modern langauges there until a few
months ago (so if its wrong blame her), and her experience of doing research
there is:

1. You cannot take books out of the Bodleian itself. You have to order a book
to be able to read it (this usually takes approx. 2 hours), then you can only
use it in the library itself. There is an old and a new part to the Bod., these
buildings are actually connected underground by a tunnel. Trollies are used in
this tunnel to get books form one building to another.

2. She said there were some texts you could read online (don't know what sort
of format (probably not CD though)

3. Their card catlog was a card system, but they are working on, or may already
have finished automating this information using OLIS (Oxford Library
Information Service) system which will enable people to find
books, authors etc. using computer.

4. The classification system used by the Bod. is one that was developed by
them. Apparantly they use the size of the book, as well as the subject matter
to classify books. All books of similar size go on the same shelves (to save
space I suppose)

This was for the foreign languages section, not sure about other sections of
the library, if they are more advanced.

If you want more information, I would suggest you write to Bodleian, I don't
know the exact address, but I'm sure:

The Bodleian Library
Oxford
Oxon
Great Britain

would get it there.

Also, my sister has a friend who is doing research into Shakespeare at Oxford -
he's an Australian studying over here. I have his name and tel. number (sorry
no address - though could probably get it if you like) if you would like to get
in touch with him, mail me and I'll send you the details.

HTH,
Catrin