What is to be printed and how it can best be done are questions that have hardly begun to be faced. This paper discusses the issues involved in offering printing for online catalogs and weighs, in particular, the advantages and disadvantages of screen printing versus remote printing. Certain other technical issues are also covered, particularly buffered versus unbuffered asynchronous printer ports. There are an increasing number of software packages available that are appropriate for library databases, but the choice of the one that best meets your needs is not always simple. This paper examines the growing literature on the topic to provide help in the identification of microcomputer software for library database applications and to assist in the evaluation process.
Appendixes list selected microcomputer software directories and specific software packages.
The study design provided for the assessment of both systems on the basis of technical performance and user acceptance by NLM's patrons and staff. This article describes the study's research strategy and methods, some aspects of which are unique to the evaluation of online information systems. Included is a description of verification and limits testing that were used to determine and document the extent to which both systems met the technical performance requirements specified a priori for an NLM-based online catalog. The results of technical performance testing were separately corroborated by a strong and consistent pattern of findings from the three studies of user acceptance. Overall, users of the online catalog at NLM are relatively infrequent library visitors and represent a broad cross section of professional roles and occupations.