Corrections

Last Month I mentioned The Computer Coordinator from ICCE. The correct price is $10

Library Micro News

Where in the World is Carmen SanDiego?

  Nothing trips my trigger like a good simulation, and the Broderbund folks have come up  with a winner in Where in the World Is Carmen SanDiego?  The user becomes an Interpol agent and tracks criminals around the world, gathering clues (and hopefully) solving the case.

  Kids use the World Almanac – a copy is included in the package – to compare monetary units and capitals and a whole bunch of other stuff to interpet information provided by Carmen (or should I say the micro?) You jump on planes, go to various sites upon arrival, and travel again (and again and again…) to locate the criminal.

  There’s a fair amount of reality. The program gives you two weeks per crime and it makes you sleep (although eating must be a forgone conclusion). Solve the crime and you get promoted and players names and ranks are saved to disk. If you have trouble (who doesn’t?) getting kids to use the almanac, Carmen should do a lot for you. (Apple ][+, ][e, ][c)

Finally an Apple Videodisk?

  The CUE Newsletter (Sept 1985) reports that one of the field trips at this years CUE conference (Oct 18-19 San Jose CA) will be to Apple computer. Once there attendees will see “a demonstration of several Apple ][e and Macintosh computer controlled video discs, exploring both instrucitonal and reference functions.” To all my critics who said “a videodisk will never run on an Apple” I would appreciate an apology. Now all we will have to do is wait for the honest to goodness real life product announcement.

AppleWorks for School Librarians

  Hi Willow Research and Publishing (PO Box 1801, Fayetteville, AR 72702) forwarded a copy of Appleworks for School Librarians by May Lien Ho. The first copy is $20 (with a template disk) and additional copies (sans disk) are $10 each.

  Being an AppleWorks enthusiast (and having done the Primer of Library Microcomputing  based on the same software) I was excited to see the book. Unfortunately it is more AppleWorks that it is libraries.  It tries to duplicate the excellent Apple disk based intro to the program ad doesn’t get into library applications often till the end of a chapter.

  There is an excellent chapter on Dave Loertscher’s “Collection Mapping” scheme, complete with sample templates. If you have yet to get into this rather theory yet, AFSL is perhaps the best short attack I’ve seen.

  The templates included in the package are ho-hum but solid. They are not very sophisticated . References to Naumer (bad sorts) made me even more skeptical. Still with all of these shortcomings it should be a usefull title. I only wish it had been more library.

Rumors again

  last month I predicted that Apple would have some announcements, and I held off this month’s issue for exactly that reason. I hit three of four: there is a 20 meg drive for the Mac that you can daisy chain with another drive (floppy or hard) from the external drive port for the steal of $1495.  The $399 one meg card for the Aple ][e was announced along with the 3 ½” 800K drives for that family (watch AppleWorks now) along with new monitors and the Image Writer ][ (4 colors ad 160 cps and a slot for 32K buffer and a built in Appletalk connector). The only one I blew was the 2meg Mac.

The Cave and other Antediluvian Mentalities

  I have been promoting the use of a CD ROM as an interlibrary loan tool, and have become involved in some heavey duty arguments about the wisdom of such a know location tool. The argument usually occurs when a user of an expensive, online bibliographic utility who laments that the system they are using “is the one, the common bibliographic utility from which all librarians will be able to pool bibliographic efforts and to interlibrary loan as well.”

  I know L.B. is going to turn over in her grave (okay so she’s not there yet but WLN: not the bibliographic utility has always been optimistic) but I have a basic feeling about ILL: short and sweet the requesting library should bear the burden of the request.. This means requesting from a known location with such things as the call number so the filling library need not go to their catalog and bother locating where it should be.

  A good part of library automation has been directed toward providing “known locations” because blind searching, making a request without a know location, is the labor (ie expensive) process. Our friend, who begins the argument, of course uses a utility where such information is not displayed, but this is disposed as an “unimportant concern.”

  “You’re taking the library world back to the ‘50’s” he/she continues “and besides that you’re data base will be only issued when it is economically feasible (when you get enough additions to make producing another CD ROM cost effective) and we have to have instantaneous access.”

  Me sainted pappy, who idea of using a library is taking his granddaughter there for something to do, has a saying: “You get what you pay for.” You rarely see Mercedes dealers offer 7.7% financing ad the online bibliographic vendors are the same way. Why should the “little libraries”, the libraries who can’t afford $1.80 bibliographic records even dream of having them? I mean that’s revolutionary as the regular joe taxpayers (ie youse and me) getting excited  cause the fortune 500 companies pay little or no tax. If Ronnie (insert  your own bibliographic utility) says it’s for the good of the country (libraries) then we should not question the cost or the mode of delivery.

  “If you develop another tool, then we would need to use two different systems to do our Interlibrary Loan” is usually the next retort. If I point out that perhaps this tool might have known locations for stuff that’s not in their expensive online tool the reply almost universally is “but we don’t need that sort of material anyway. “The real question, or bottom line is 180 degrees from their argument. Perhaps as much as 5% of the library community can afford Mercedes online bibliographic utilities. They only grimace internally at exhorbitant record and transaction charges, but unless you want to play ball with them and their world, then you’ll just have to do without.

 The rest of the library community, the 95% of the “have nots”  who walk because they can’t afford or are unaware of the alternatives to online electronic records are the peasants of the library middle ages who live happily in serfdom because they know no better way. The Lords have spoken and because we can’t join their world we are left to suffer. The last five years, and the next ten years have/will change the power structure. The capital intense online systems will have to address the ability of small libraries to obtain full fledged MARC records and use them at pennies apiece and share them without silly bylaws and fourteenth party guidelines.

  The power lies in the records,  and as long as the high and mighties control their use and distribution they will have the power. The rest of us can have full blown MARC records for way less than the online folks charge. We can use them to do interlibrary loan and cataloging and verification but until our clamor becomes loud enough to drown out the mainframe junkies and their online mentality we will be serfs to an outmoded mentality. If anybody is living in the fifties, it’s the online junkies. In their minds, they are the only ones that can afford technology. But then, serfs didn’t have micros. Luckily, small libraries do.

Be Youse Own Consultant (part second)

  Last month I talked about library word processing. The number two tool is the spreadsheet.  This becomes a little difficult to explain, and is even tougher to learn. You’ll open up more cranial hair follicals with this tool than any other – but once you learn it you’ll find that you were glad  you did.

   The spreadsheet is a number cruncher made up a series of cells laid out in rows and columns. You can play a single cell or a series of cells against another cell or another series of cells to perform mathematical niranna. Rather like a chinese menu that calculates: one from column A; two from column B and all of column C.

  Last week I was in one of our libraries showing the competent CF staff how they could use the sheet to perform their budget an circ stat functions. I’ll share the circ stat example with you.

   The screen divisions that go down the page are known as rows while the breaks that go across the sheet are known as columns. In column B5 you have the total circ for the first day of the month. This figure is arrived at by adding the Total Adult (C5) and Total YA (D5) together.

   You have the ability to start simple, and as you become more familiar  with the internal workings of the program spruce up and intensify your number abilities.

   The sheet is no tougher to use than the columnar pad you already track and add        with but has some very interesting possibilities.  As you complete the monthly totals, you can move them either by rekeying, a clipboard such as AppleWorks, or a link feature available in more powerful sheets to an annual report. If you care to key stats from previous years, your monthly report can include a comparison column from the last year for example detailing daily or total comparisons.

  You can apply the same number crunching ability to tracking budget expenditures, getting detailed orders under budget, and projecting costs for programs. I’ve used a spreadsheet to calculate the paychecks of library employees and track the net lender status of a state full of libraries. If it’s numbers its a spreadsheet.

The Mac Page

Only in the Wired Librarian’s Newsletter

   The upgrading of a  product usually does not rate a full-blown evaluation, but ProVue (ProVue Development Corporation222 2nd St., Huntington Beach, CA 92648) has added so much to OverVue that in many ways it is an entirely new product, and a great one at that.

   OverVue has always been fast, sorting  a thousand records in our test in less than three seconds: in fact the old Seiko wristwatch could barely be stopped and started in our test. It uses a columnar format, athough records can be added and edited with a “zoom” feature, and provides for complex mathmatical manipulation, and in some ways is very spreadsheet-like.

   Grouping and ungrouping records is very quick and provides the opportunity to generate summaries with ease. An option exisits to select unique records, helpful for locating keying errors. A “select more” command in OverVue allows the user the opportunity of pulling together records. Case can be either ingnored or chosen as equal, not equal, less than/greater than, less or equal or greater or equal criteria may be applied.

 (2005 note: believe it or not twenty years ago screen shots gave us all woodies)

An OverVue sample with the Find Menu

   A math menu provides for totals, averages, counts, minimums, maximums, running totals and differences and the ability to create your own equations. Some of my favorite functions, fill, empty fill, sequence, missing, and propogate are still around from earlier versions. Propogate is perhaps my favorite: OverVue looks at a range of cells, deduces what should be in them and then emplaces it. It’s easy to swap and manipulate columns. Two new features, input pattern and value bar are outasight for data entry. Input pattern allows you to create a pattern which data will be thrown in: for example a social security number usually has two dashes so you create an input pattern to use for that column. The value bar allows you to create several “default” values and associate them with the column. During data entry they automatically appear and you just click on the one you care to put in the cell – or override with the keyboard.

    Two new features that really steal the day are the graph and macro additions. Finally I have on the Mac what one of my early ][ word processors (Screenwriter if it means anything had: macros. A macro is a series of keystrokes that can be invoked by holding, in OverVue’s case anyway, the command key and another key. These macros can be simple or complex, depending on your need and they are easily built using the notepad. If the macro is too large to build with that desk accesory, they you may build it with MacWrite and load it in.

   This new version also includes the ability to import data into OverVue from DIF, SYLK, dBASE, and text files with clear detailed instructions for the procedure. Another new feature allows you to join two data sheets together.

A Sample OverVue Pie Chart

   Report generation is easily done, and thoroughly explained as all program features are in an outstanding manual. ProVue should be appluaded for doing a knock up job on this revision and OverVue should stand well for large files that need to be reshuffled quickly and easily. Orders and periodical lists are a natural, although I the columnar form makes long entries, such as bibliographies, somewhat cumbersome.

Accessory Pak #1

   For all of you who are tired on only cutting/copying/pasting part of MacPaint drawings, the folks from Silicon Beach Software (PO Box 261430 San Diego CA 92126) have the answer. It’s Paint Cutter part of tehir Accessory Pak #1. On our friend the Fat Mac you can open as many as four paint pictures and quickly cut over under sideways through.

   Other Utilities include a Rulers desk accesory that puts, you guessed it, a set of rulers around a MacPaint drawing window. Screen Saver darkens the screen after a predetermined amount of time; Coordinates reads displays the cursor position in inches, centimeters or pixels; Quick Eject (not needed with the new finder) and Silicon Beach Font.  At $39.95 it’s a steal for all MacArtists.

The Mac Grapevine

   MacNexus (Sacrementon Mac Users, PO Box 60908, Sacremento CA 95860) reports of someone using both a Hyperdrive and MacBottom. They merely put the bottom startup program on the Hyper and drove her away. I suppose if you wanted to back one up with the other it would be cool, but it seems a steep way to come up with 20 meg.

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 !!! 

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 !!!