Investigation of the Searching Efficiency and Cost of Creating a Remote Access Catalog for the New York State Library. Final Report

From experimental work performed, and reported upon in this document, it is concluded that converting the New York State Library (NYSL) shelf list sample to machine readable form, and searching this shelf list using a remote access catalog are technically sound concepts though the capital costs of data conversion and system installation will be substantial. The two primary areas of investigation covered in this report are: (1) pilot conversion to machine readable form of a portion of the NYSL shelf list; the purpose of this conversion process itself being the creation of a file of machine readable records which can be searched by a computer under the control of a telecommunication computer terminal. The purpose of the pilot conversion test is to determine costs of conversion, and any unusual technical problems; and (2) experimentation with, and use of, the initial product of the pilot conversion in catalog searching. The purpose of the search test is to determine technical feasibility of the search process where a user must formulate a query as a logical combination of alphabetic search words, a process far different than the mental eye-brain scanning of entries on catalog cards. (Author/SJ)