11

1.1

Background, history
and aims
The project proposal

The project "Microprocessor Networking in Libraries'* was conceived in
1980. The proposers, Neil McLean and Mel Collier, had long been
involved in library automation, and were currently engaged in
implementing a large multi-site telecommunication network at the
Polytechnic of Central London, linked to the SWALCAP library dataprocessing cooperative [1]. They had also worked on early developments
in microcomputer-based applications, and were increasingly interested
in the gulf between received opinion about the capability of microcomputers for substantial library applications and the apparent, butlargely untested, potential of the newer technology.
The catalyst for this thinking was the appearance on the British market in
1980-81 of microcomputer networks. Microcomputer networks are thelow cost end of local area network (LAN) technology, and were the first
off-the-shelf products to result from LAN research stretching back into
the early 1970s. The appearance of microcomputer networks wasattended by unprecedented publicity (even for the computer press)
focusing on the predicted importance of this technology for the muchheralded "office automation revolution".
It seemed to the proposers that a revolution in office organisation andassociated information management was of itself of prime importance tothe library world: many information handling operations in libraries are
no different in principle from general office tasks. It would be particularly
useful to show whether micro-networks are appropriate not only for
general office tasks but also for specialised library data management andinformation retrieval. The key question for this smaller scale technology
was how it would perform in relation to very large textual files andnumerous users.
A proposal was therefore made to the British Library Research andDevelopment Department to investigate microcomputer networks for1. Background, history and aims

2

library applications [1]. While the researchers would report generally on
this topic, it was decided to focus on the online public access catalogue(OPAC) as a trial application. This choice was initially made on thegrounds that, although there were already many computerised cataloguing systems, the catalogue itself''remained a hard copy [product] with its
attendant problems of non-currency, inflexibility and recurrent cost"; itwas felt that the flexibility of network configurations might help toreduce the cost of implementation of OPACs, particularly for smaller
libraries, and that the project might also attempt to tackle some of theproblems of the limitations of MARC records for users' access tobibliographic information [2, Section 4.4].
The proposal gained British Library Research and Development
Department support, and also attracted funds from the Department ofIndustry (now Trade and Industry) as an associated project with theInformation Technology Centre (now Library Technology Centre),
which was also based at the Polytechnic in Regent Street. The twoprojects officially began in June 1982, with the first project staff being
appointed later in the year.
1.2

Staffing

Stephen Walker was appointed as research fellow in November 1982 andGillian Venner, also as research fellow, in January 1983. Nathalie Mitev
was appointed as research officer in July 1983.
A small amount of additional programming assistance was available for afew months in 1984.
Because the course of the research was influenced strongly by theinterests and aptitudes of individual team members, it is appropriate tosay something about the background of each of the workers.
Nathalie Mitev is an information scientist, trained in France although
she has worked a good deal in the UK, including working on a previous
British Library Research and Development project. She has been
involved in setting up information systems, as a search intermediary, andhas some programming experience. Her interests lie mainly in the area ofthe study of users and the use of information systems, in which she iscurrently researching for a PhD.

1. Background, history and aims

3

Gillian Venner completed a physics and maths degree before becoming acomputer programmer. She gradually came to specialise in library
applications, first at Bath University, where she developed theMinicatalogue with Philip Bryant, and then at Dundee University,where she was responsible for the library automation.
Stephen Walker has been a mathematician and statistician and spent
many years in industry. In recent years he has moved into information
science, and his main interest is in information systems for non-specialist
users. He has designed and written several information retrieval (IR)systems.
Throughout this report the word "team" usually refers to one or more ofthese three people.
1.3

History of the project

By the start of the project (November 1982) the proposers had alreadyacquired a LAN — a "Cluster/One" system from Zynar (later Nestar) —for demonstration purposes in the Polytechnic's Information Technology Centre. The researchers satisfied themselves that it would be possible
to implement a (possibly rather limited) online catalogue system on thisnetwork, given suitable software.
It had been hoped by the proposers that an existing text retrieval ordatabase management package could be bought or leased, and substantially modified, if necessary, so that it would operate within the LANenvironment, and allow adequate access to a catalogue file.
There were at that time few IR systems for microcomputers capable ofsupporting reasonably large files and providing suitable access facilities
for an online catalogue, and this is probably still the case. The teaminvestigated two IR packages, both micro versions of established textretrieval systems, and attended demonstrations of two database management systems (DBMS). It seemed unlikely that the DBMS would besuitable on the grounds that, whatever the suppliers may say, they are notvery suitable for storage of, and retrieval from, variable length records oflargely textual content. As for the IR systems, only one of them might
have been operable on the Apple II computers which had been obtained
for the Cluster/One network as user stations. This system appeared tohave a very poor response time, and the suppliers were not very
encouraging when asked whether it would be possible to make the source

4

1. Background, history and aims

code and documentation available so that it could be made suitable forcatalogue access. There were at that time no LANs available which could
handle the emerging 16-bit IR packages such as the micro versions ofCAIRS or BRS.
Thus the only way to proceed was for the team to set about developing its
own access software, as well as software to produce a suitable source filefrom MARC records on an exchange tape and to transfer it onto thenetwork's disc store.
In April 1983 an additional grant from the British Library Research andDevelopment Department made possible the purchase of a moreadvanced LAN system, a "PLAN 4000" from the same supplier. It wasinstalled, with five terminals (or stations), in the Regent Street buildingof the Polytechnic. Such software as had been written was transferred to
the new network and all further development was carried out on it. The
new LAN gave somewhat faster disc access and, more importantly, thepossibility of mounting a catalogue file of quite substantial size. This
meant that it became possible to test the software and hardware underrealistic conditions: with at least the complete holdings of a site library of
the Polytechnic. It should be noted that the higher cost of the PLAN
network (Section 3.3.1) moved the balance of the project towards systems
aimed at somewhat larger libraries than had been intended.
LOCAS supplied a MARC exchange tape of the 30,000 records for items
held in the largest site library, and the team wrote programs to enable thefile to be read and partially stripped on a mainframe and transferred to thenetwork ready for further processing and inversion. By July 1983 the file
had been transferred to the PLAN 4000 network.
To get some idea of the likely performance of the system some 6000
records were mounted under an existing IR system (FIRS II, a later
version of the system described in [3]); this demonstrated that thehardware would probably behave adequately under a realistic load, but
this system was not tested on "rear' users as the user interface is notsuitable for untrained people. A few hundred records were also loaded in aformat suitable for the software package Cardbox (Caxton Software Ltd).
In April 1984 the Polytechnic bought a second PLAN 4000 network withten stations. This was installed in the Riding House Street site library andwas to be used for library purposes other than the present project as well
as for the live evaluation of the OPAC.

1. Background, history and aims

5

By the spring of 1984 the team had written an IR system, without any
more in the way of a user interface than was needed for debugging andtesting, of a fairly conventional inverted index type but designed so as tominimise the amount of disc access. Preliminary work had been done onrecord and index display layouts and modes of user input.
Tests showed that the system would probably perform adequately with alarger file than had been envisaged, so the team carried out a second
transfer onto the network of the entire Polytechnic union catalogue ofsome 90,000 records, and also took the opportunity to include more of theMARC fields than had originally been intended, and to redesign theOPAC's bibliographic record.
A stand had been booked at a conference and exhibition "Public access tolibrary files" to be held by the Centre for Catalogue Research in
September 1984. Spurred by this goal, the team produced a working
OP AC system with about one day to spare, and took it with a 33,000
record subfile and four user stations to Bath. The system was namedOkapi (if this has to be an acronym it stands for "Online keyword accessto public information"). Okapi proved far more successful than had beenhoped. At that time there was no automatic logging of the system, but theteam obtained, by observation of, and chatting to, hundreds of users(librarians, students, people in the library automation business) at theexhibition, many useful comments and suggestions.
The final part of the project was some evaluation of the system as anOPAC. It had always been intended that it should be set up in one of thePolytechnic's site libraries as an alternative to, or replacement for, themicroform catalogue. It had also been intended to do some testing undercontrolled conditions. Through the Centre for Catalogue Research,
Linda Reynolds was retained as consultant to help with the design ofevaluation methods.
During the autumn of 1984 evaluation procedures were drawn up. These
consisted of (1) fairly comprehensive self-logging within the search
programs, (2) user observation sheets and (3) a questionnaire to beadministered by one of the team. It became apparent that there would not
be time to carry out the controlled experiments.
In November 1984 a terminal was installed in the Riding House Streetsite for library staff use, and at the end of November one public accessterminal was set up and data collection was started. As expected, the1. Backgroundy history and aimsb

OP AC proved rather popular with the users (mainly undergraduate
students of social sciences and humanities). Detailed protocols of someseventy user sessions were collected, as well as extensive machine loggingof several thousand searches.
1.4

A i m s of the projectIt can be seen that what started as work primarily concerned with theinvestigation of the suitability of a particular type of computerconfiguration for library automation soon became a study of the publicaccess catalogue. As work progressed, it became apparent to the team thatlearning how to make good OPACs is probably the most important aspectin the application of computers to libraries: the "data processing" side oflibrary automation is hardly an area for further research, and is not ofmuch direct benefit to users, but the OP AC potentially offers greatlyimproved access to library materials. The OPAC can also be seen as aprototype of interactive retrieval systems for general users — somethingwhich viewdata systems might be if television transmission standards
were such as to allow good response times and adequate display ofinformation. (That the study of catalogue use was important for thedesign of "universal" IR systems for general users was realised at least
fifteen years ago: the much-cited study by Tagliacozzo and Kochen,
Information-seeking behavior of catalog users [4], arose out of a project for"learning to design a 'growing encyclopedia system' ".)Evaluation of the hardware took second place, but some features of theprototype OPAC, which was one of the results of this research, do takeadvantage of facilities which are more readily available with networked
hardware than with multi-user single-processor configurations.
References
1 Collier M W and Piper D. Multi-site networking: experience of thePolytechnic of Central London. Program 18 (2), 1984, pl47-156.
2 Collier M W and McLean N F. Microprocessor networking inlibraries. Research proposal to the British Library Research andDevelopment Department. April 1982.
3 Walker S. An information retrieval package for microcomputers.
Program 16 (3), 1982, pl71-179.
4 Tagliacozzo R and Kochen M. Information-seeking behavior ofcatalog users. Information Storage and Retrieval 6 (5), 1970, p363-381.