Terminals Among the Stacks

By Philip Elmer-DeWitt

For nearly three-quarters of a century, the heavy oak drawers and musty, dog- eared cards of the New York Public Library's catalog room were the index to knowledge for countless scholars and schoolchildren. Last month, however, the card catalog served up its last title, author and book number. As part of the main library's $45 million face-lifting, the catalog room is being computerized, its 8,973 drawers and 10 million cards replaced by a central memory bank and 50 low-slung terminals. Instead of thumbing through stacks of 3-by-5 cards in search of a book, readers will now type a title or topic on a keyboard and watch the pertinent information flash onto a screen before them.

Computerized catalogs like those at the New York Public Library and the Library of Congress (which went on-line four years ago) are only the most visible signs of the changes that electronic technology is making in the nation's 15,000 public libraries. Hundreds of libraries are already using computers to perform such tasks as tracking inventories and sending out overdue slips. Others are purchasing microcomputers as a way of attracting new patrons. The most forward-looking are plugging their new terminals into computer networks and giving cardholders access to remote electronic data banks. "Libraries have to act fast," says David Nashelsky, senior librarian at the San Jose, Calif., public library. "In the future, a lot of information is going to be available only via computers."

More than a third of the 169 public library systems in California have microcomputers for cardholders to use, and the state has set aside $240,000 in federal funds to make the machines even more widely available. Other states are not far behind. At the Cranford, N.J., public library, business executives testing the latest financial-management programs have to compete for computer time with game-playing teenagers. Video games are not allowed at the public library in Tacoma; instead, the library offers free BASIC programming classes and a well-stocked computer lab, where potential buyers can test-drive the latest models. At the Peterborough, N.H., town library, cardholders check out and take home low-cost computers just as they would a mystery or gothic romance. "It's a matter of survival," says Joan Zaleski, director of the Connetquot Public Library in Bohemia, N.Y. "You have to be an up-to-date, exciting place or you'll go under."

A few public libraries have even ventured into the world of computer communications. The North-Pulaski branch of the Chicago Public Library, which claims to have installed in 1981 the world's first library computer available to patrons, also boasts what may be the first electronic library bulletin board. The system, which lets people with home computers and modems dial into the library's Apple II, has logged 16,000 calls in three years, including requests for everything from book reviews to tips on pet care. A library bulletin board in San Bernardino, Calif., lists theater performances and city council meetings, as well as the phone numbers and addresses of local politicians. Library planners envision the day when a reader sitting at a branch-library terminal will be able to call up books and articles stored in computers all over the world.

Elements of the library of the future are already in place. Any branch equipped with a terminal can retrieve the full text of scores of newspapers, magazines and professional journals through data-base services like Lockheed's Dialog and Mead's NEXIS and LEXIS systems. LEXIS, for example, allows a subscriber to display on the computer screen the text of every federal court decision handed down in the past 30 years. The services are a godsend to researchers who regularly search through large numbers of documents for a few key words or phrases. A student doing a paper on juvenile delinquency, for example, can plug into a data bank and ask to see all the articles in which the words child and crime appear. He can then further narrow the search by calling up only those stories that contain the words murder or arson.

Unfortunately, electronic information services are still luxuries beyond the budget of all but the best-funded public library systems. Then, too, some librarians resist commercial data banks on philosophical grounds. Says Robert Wedgeworth, executive director of the American Library Association: "Many are reluctant to offer a service for which they will have to attach a fee."

The advent of the computerized library has also brought new problems. Computers have a way of making simple research tasks more difficult--for example, when a casual user needs computer instruction just to find a book. Even trained librarians say there is an art to performing an efficient data- base search; an awkwardly phrased query can quickly lead to information overload, generating hundreds of responses. At the same time, computers can be too efficient, eliminating what is called the serendipity factor. "The real joy of scholarly research is discovering something valuable in the process of looking for something else," says Arnold Compton, a retired schoolteacher from Arlington, Va. "You can't do that with a computer. Or at least I haven't figured out how."

Economic necessity, not serendipity, will push libraries into the computer age. Electronic data are easier to store and cheaper to move from place to place than printed material. On the other hand, most readers prefer browsing through books and magazines to reading little green words on a video screen. And nobody seems eager to take on the Herculean task of transcribing into bits and bytes the vast body of knowledge already stored in printed volumes. "The book is here to stay," says New York Public Library President Vartan Gregorian, who presided over that library's computerization. "What we're doing is symbolic of the peaceful coexistence of the book and the computer."

With reporting by Cristina Garcia/New York, with other bureaus