Publishers' bibliographic databases—justification, history and impact

A brief examination of the internal reasons for setting up publishers' bibliographic databases, followed by a fuller examination of the external reasons including: —Making information available to the trade generally. —Whitaker, Bowker & Book Data. —Electronic data exchange. —Towards the next generation of systems. —The importance of the publisher in record supply. The paper then describes several systems including MDMS (Pergamon), VISTA (Macmillan) and Star (OUP); their relationship to other systems in house; some of the problems encountered; and some notable achievements.’ Finally, the speaker discusses the next generation system; The effect on record supply; The customer's needs; The composite catalogue online; A model for information supply; Initiatives for progress; Concerned bodies; and asks is another industry umbrella/organisation required?