From The Library Letter, February 1988:
“The new online catalog will make it possible for you to look up books
and nonprint materials in ways that are impossible in the traditional card
catalog. For example, with the old card catalog, you need’ to know the
exact title of a book to be able to look it up by title. With an online
catalog, you can search for a title by using just a few key words from the
title. The online catalog will also permit sophisticated subject searching,
such as combining two or more subject headings in order to retrieve
titles that deal with a narrow topic. Like the present card catalog, the
online catalog will list only books, selected government documents, and
nonprint materials such as records, tapes, filmstrips, and multimedia kits.
It will not list journal articles. The libraries’ complete holdings will
be searchable from terminals located in both Milne and Fraser Libraries.
Eventually, microcomputers in other locations, such as faculty offices
or residence halls, should be able to access the online catalog.”“Barcode labels, similar to the UPC symbols on many products in
stores, are being added to the back cover and the back inside page of the
books in Milne and Fraser Libraries. By the end of March 1988, more than
600,000 barcodes will be attached to more than 300,000 volumes. The barcoding
project is part of an ongoing project that will result in an online
catalog and circulation system, scheduled to be operational in the early
1990s….”“All members of the College Libraries staff, along with [100] student employees who have been hired
specifically for this project, will participate in the barcoding effort.”