Library Micro News

Follett Acquires Library Software Company

     Chuck called the other day to say that the Follett Software Co. of Crystal Lake had acquired the Library Software Co. of Pleasant View, CA. This acquisition is the most signifigant single development in the history of library microcomputing as it brings two of the largest players onto the same team. Joe Ward, the LSC code wizard will join the Follett crew, with Bob Skapura, the wizard of microcomputer manuals will take a consultant role, hopefully to keep up the outstanding work with the english language.  This news just came down the tubes Thursday, and we will have more details next month.

CILMUG May Meeting

     Randy and Lori at Parlin-Ingersoll library in Canton, IL wrote to say that their next meeting will be in Macomb, at WIU on May 31. These folks run one of the premier micro library interest groups, and if you’d like to show up give them a call at 309-647-0064.

Collegiate Microcomputer

     For the academic crowd – you folks with sheepskins isntead of ancestors – you may care to scope out Collegiate Microcomputer [Rose-Hulman Inst. Of Tech; Terre Haute, IN 47803] It’s the kind of thing that talks about reviews of the literature, some funky reviews and lots of stuff about courses, units, and topics using the micro in the brain drain calssroom. Ya gotta pay ($28/yhear for the quearterly) but then again WLN: not the bibliographic utility ain’t free either.

Why I have chosen librianship as a career

     The following piece was shared with my during one of my treks through the cornfields. I hope you get off on it as much as I do.

     “It is hard for me to put on paper just what librarianship means to me. It is the only part of drab existence which has any meaning. My heroine of all time is Minnie Sears. I strive to emulate her in my daily contacts. Of course y her is Melvil Dewey. It is a little known fact that I sleep with his picture under my pillow every night. I also greatly admire St. Jerome, the patron saint of libraries. Every year in May I make a pilgrimage to Ruthven and light vigil candles to him in the Ruthven Public Library.  What is the best part of my job, you may ask? Oh to choose! Emptying the bookdrop every morning brings tears to my eye. Stamping with a stamper and ink pad has been known to bring me to orgasm. My favorite Dewey number is 589.221 for reasons best left unstated. My favorite book is ALA Rules for Filing Catalog Cards (soon to be a major motion picture from Paramount, directed by Steven Spielberg) Oh, I could go on and on but maybe it is best if I list my personal talents and attributes which make me a consummate librarian:

1.      I’m really stacked

2.      I’ve been checked out many times

3.      I am intimate with public service

4.      I’ve had some “on and off” experience with withdrawal procedures

5.      I’m very good at………..”

I’d go on, but the rest makes the wired librarian blush. I was told that this piece

Zen and the Art of Dewey Decimal Classification, Chapter One

     There are about forty folks who have been around since day one of WLN: not the bibliographic utility. This issue marks the start of our third year. All the other journals have their little piques, all we can say is that we are the longest running monthly, continuisly published library micro rag. We just thought it appropriate that we’d take most of this issue to review the past, ‘cause most of those folks are major players in where we are going.

            People.  The most important part of microcomputing. The Grande Dame of Library Micro, Betty Costa, who along with her better half Lar put computer Cat up almost five years ago, sold out last year but still is actively involved in supporting the program. She also did the first useable book: A Micro handbook for small libraries and media centers. Bob Skapura and Joe Ward, perhaps the most productive team gave us all of the dynamite Library Software Co.  stuff. I’ll never forget that night in Houston Skoops and I sat up all night in a real sleeze diner (it was the only thing we could find open) talking about what the micro could do in a library. A lot of it has come true: there’s still a ton on the way. Bob Stevens, the code wizard behind Book Trak. Nobody, absolutely nobody, puts more records on a floppy disk.

     Chuck Follett and Andy Larson who recognized early on that providing schools good software would be a viable service for Follett. Vic Rosenburg,  the brains behind Personal and Professional Bibliographic Software and all the download utilities. Even though he is an academic, the man is on top of it. A.S. Ball, from north of the border with Ocelot where things are a little more sane who admitted that 8bit technology was too slow to run circ and cat off one processor so developed a dual system where you create the cat and then strip the records off for circ. Jeb Griffiths of Winnebago, the first to give us a hard disk cir system. Kurt Parks and the folks from Scribe, although a new player, give folks catalog card looking screens to use. Jim “I’ll build you an S-100 board to do anything” Burke with Micro Library Software.

     How about Duncan Highsmith and Glen Granger and all the folks at the Highsmith Co. Inc.  who had enough faith to fund the Template Clearinghouse? Kathy DeBour who is relentless in her efforts to get the outasight Grolier software out, although new to the library world is learning in the old fast study mode. Pam McLaughlin, who is killing herself trying to get the word out about ERIC MicroSearch.  John Magoon, the guy who gave us the best catalog card stock for micro printers and can solve any supply problems with the resources of University Products. Harvey Hahn who ships his Cards program with the source code. JoAnne Troutner, whose The Media Specialist, the Micro, and the Curriculum, is the tie a lot of librarians need to bring the hardware into their operations. Jerry and  Rosie Carter who are proving that a garage is still a fine place to produce Electronic Bookshelf.

     Then there’s a whole list of folks who have done nothing but help: LeRoy, Ann, Bobby, TD aka “mr soldering iron”,DR. Dos, the CL crew of Don and Betty and Brent and Michelle. Rick and Kay from Micro Ideas, Red Frockman and Monica from the fruit company. Sharon and Anita and Scudley and Carolyn and marvelous Martin and the Deacon from MN. There’s Randy and Lori who will put ILL users together, and saving the best for last, Woodski from the bible of LiSci. I’ve left more out than I’ve included, but to me they prove one point: There are an outrageous number of real good people who want librarians to use the micro wisely. God love em for it.

Software

     I’ve been pretty lucky to see a lot of software in my life. The best educational stuff would be Rocky’s Boots, Pinball and Music Constuction Set(s), TK! Solver, M-ss-ng-Links, and Alcohol (aka The Party). Four utilities are unsurpassed: DiversiCopy and DiverDos, Copy ][ Plus, and Global Program Line Editor. For library management (and in order) Appleworks, Quick Card, Circulation Plus, Professoinal Bibliographic Software, DB Master 4 Plus, and the program that won’t die: Overdue Writer.

Hardware

     It’s hard to believe that for a long time I worked with an Apple ][ plus and was in heaven. My Apple wasn’t ten days old before we were soldering away trying to get a lower case adapter working. Then it became a 64K machine. Then the ][e arrived and then the c and all of a sudden an Apple with less the 128K couldn’t do anything. Then the Mac arrived and the world hasn’t been the same. As I sit here and wonder what doubling the 512 would do in terms of performance, it’s hard to remember the good old days - and I don’t go as far back as some of you.

     If there is a continuing thread it is that things are always getting better. The point is as long as micros are hot we are always going to be getting better hardware; the question is will t he software keep up with it? When the history books are finally written there will be no doubt that mankind got more out of an Apple ][ than ever thought possible. Will the same be said for Mac and whatever else comes down the pike? If we all adopt the Mitch Kapor mentality, that it takes 5 million to develop apiece of software probably not. Thankfully I think Kapor is all wet and there are enough folks doing things in garages to keep the fires warm and toasty for a long while. 

     Very early on we had the MS-DOS mentality to deal with. Everybody knows I object to overpriced hype, and there is no machine that exemplifies this better than the bleu. Buying bleu is accepting the bankers mindframe: it’s safe and it works and you’ll never lose your job.  You may have to buy new hardware every three years because of the bleu product cycle, but that goes with the bankers lifestyle.

     There is another danger  in having one standard: everything becomes instantly mediocre. There is no motivation to be innovative, you have two or three spreadsheets, two or three accounting packages. In some management situations that will work fine, and depending what you need to do a bleu will work well. A bleu mentality will never work in schools.

     I really get upset when folks who claim to be experts and rip stuff off out of my annual buying guide without providing the proper acknowledgement walk around and say the world is going bleu. They are mainframe junkies who realized that anyone who needs a main or mini system already has hired a consultant and if they were going to continue to pull down the big time daily fees they would have to become micro experts.  Unfortunately I have only met a few (Hillis, thou art one) mainframe junkies who understand micros. You don’t solve problems by adding gigs of storage. There were more library releases in 1984 for Apple than any other hardware brand.  It’s a brutal fact of life for the bleu boys, but then there are more school libraries than any other kind.

     My real concern is that you get something and do something.  Using the micro as a library management tool is a process, one that involves that you develop our own skills. Most libraries cannot afford to develop  DP people and as better things come along  you can move up to them, but don’t get locked into something. Who knows where we  will be in five years? Not running DOS 2.0 – there wont’ be much new software next year for it.

We may be run out of town, but we hope in another brace of years we will be able to give such a positive report. Stick with us, it’s going to be fun.

The Mac Page

Only in The Wired Librarian’s Newsletter

     The most impressive piece this month is a $49 utility program called MacLabeler (IdeaForm, PO Box 1540, Fairfield, IA 52556). It produces labels for your disks with a great deal of flexibility, and this is one piece of Mac software you can’t live without. Folders or files, and you can sort by name, size, kind and date. It also comes with a ton of blank labels. Once you use it, you can’t live without it.

     Another great tool that I use almost everyday is Desk Organizer, from Warner. It’s got all your basic desk tools: calendar, roll type file, phone file (and you can dial directly if a modem is connected) a rubber stamp, a calculator, an alarm clock, a file cabinet, and the ability to print info out. Now the other stuff I’ve seen had one real drawback *you had to bring it back from disk if you were running another application with Desk Organizer, there is a Meta function where you can run another program underneath it. This works exceptionally well, and no longer is load and load again for a desktop tool. It works well, and if you are looking for the hold it all utility for  your desktop, you should check this one out.

New Finder/System

     The old software truck drove by with the disk version of the new system and finder… and if these are the things we are going to see on the new ROM version it will be slick…eject and erase at once, faster in operation, a mini finder to jump back and forth between files…Plus the imagewriter file is standard and wide and doesn’t half the idiot box that always comes up on multi page  docs…I told everyone that after a couple of years with this toy the fan would start spinning…

Rumors and half truths…….

     The East Bay Micro user’s group reports that 512K upgrades are going for $295 on the west coast these days….MacNexus from Sacramento reports that Dimensional Disks (PO Box 1180, Blaine WA 98230) has a MacSampler disk with all of that old stuff you loved on other hardware (biorhythm, calendar print, etc) for $12 plus $2 P&H…I keep hearing strange rumblings that the new finder will be able to handle ProDOS files. Of course noone at the fruit co. will comment but if it did you could take data from Appleworks  on the ][ assuming you added a 3 ½ drive (already available from Haba) and use it with Mouseworks perhaps you could take data between systems with no massage at all?  We’ll have to wait and see….

An Index to the Online Issues

1983 - When there were four microcomputers at the ALA show

December 1984

1985 - wow we've got hard drives !!!