From: GUEST,Nancy King at work Date: 01 Jul 05 - 11:42 AM

Searching on-line requires a certain amount of experience and knowledge of conventional forms, whereas the old card catalogs were somewhat more intuitive.

My experience with SIRSI (Unicorn) is limited to elementary school libraries.

Children found the card catalogues very difficult to use. They would invariably resort to wandering shelf searches, or abandon the topic in which they were originally interested and grab something else. I find that children will use the computer catalogue, without prompting. They have a high rate of success in their searches.

I love the automated system!

I can instantly see that the student who is trying to check out three books already has fifteen books charged out and overdue. Then I can, with a few mouse clicks, call up the titles, dates due, etc. and send the student to search for the overdue books.

It is so much easier to conduct the annual inventory of a school library, by wanding the bar codes, than it was using the card files.

I have often thought that correct order on library shelves would be much easier to maintain if we just didn't let anyone else touch the books on the shelf. ;)

Maybe the newly combined company will produce a programme which will scan the spines of books on a shelf, locate those books which are out of order, and rearrange the books correctly? Then catalogue users will have more success in locating a book on the shelf.   

rags