BREAKING THE SILENCE: NEWS OF SWALCAP'S LOCAL INTEGRATED LIBRARY SYSTEM
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb040334 |
| Date | 01 April 1985 |
| Pages | 3-11 |
| Published date | 01 April 1985 |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management |
3
BREAKING THE SILENCE: NEWS OF SWALCAP'S
LOCAL
INTEGRATED
LIBRARY
SYSTEM
1986 heralds a period of significant change for SWALCAP, the Bristol-based
co-operative, currently supplying centralised cataloguing and circulation
systems to 23 Member libraries. Firstly, as of 1st January it ceases to be
a consortium of libraries and becomes SWALCAP Library Services Ltd, a
private company limited by shares: the shareholders are the existing
members,
or those of the membership who have elected to take shares in
the new company. Secondly, the first quarter of 1986 will see the
full launch of SWALCAP's local integrated library system which has
been in development for the last 18 months. The first general public
viewing is scheduled for the Bath Online Conference (see p. ) in
April.
Development has been undertaken in conjunction with the System
Working Group, comprising SWALCAP staff and representatives from member
libraries,
so that there has been a strong user input into the system
design.
Over the past few
weeks,
SWALCAP has been running a series of
seminars to bring the members up to date with progress and to introduce
them to those modules which are more or less fully developed, namely
cataloguing, catalogue enquiry and circulation control. Public access
and authority control will be available imminently, with acquisitions
and serials control modules in the pipeline for 1986/87. The following
pages take a look at the system to date as it has been shown to the
SWALCAP membership. The account is, for the most part, based on a live
demonstration of the system, with full system software and a database of
100,000 records; where simulations or other sources were used, this is made
clear.
Main features and general principles
There are two major features cited by SWALCAP as fundamental to the system:
first,
that it is enquiry based; and secondly, that it is parameter-driven.
The parameter tables, used in conjunction with the enquiry driven approach,
permit any user-library to tailor the system precisely to reflect its
particular operational requirements. No terminals are hard wired; rather,
their physical or technical characteristics (make, character-set, presence
of lightpens etc) are recorded on the system, thus allowing optimum
flexibility in both type and disposition of terminals. Tables are also
kept of 'conceptual' attributes -the personality as opposed to the
physique-
such as the branch/location, the functions the terminal may
access,
and the privileges available, namely what prohibitions
passwords,
and timeouts apply. The user may, therefore, set up each
terminal to give a default menu of the functions available and then
within that may either elect to prohibit functions (by not displaying
them as available) or require appropriate password access to them.
The enquiry-driven principle was explained by comparison with the more
traditional transaction or function approach, where, normally, a user
selects at the outset which function he wishes to perform, ie. whether to
reserve an item, with appropriate enquiry facilities made available within
that.
The SWALCAP system works on the assumption that, with a few
exceptions for commonly used functions such as issue and discharge, most
transactions will originate with an enquiry. Thereafter, the enquirer may
elect to view item details, add item
details,
find out loan status and
availability, place a reservation, make an order etc. Those choices
are displayed as a range of logically appropriate options at the foot of
the screen: the system is a mix of menu and command, with only the first
two characters of commands needing to be input. Wherever feasible, the
range of options is sensible and meaningful for each level of an enquiry,
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