EDuced

New versions of telecommunication software usually spell trouble for those of us who've established routines for access to remote systems such as OCLC. Over the years, I've become accustomed to the keyboard gymnastics often needed to generate proper responses while searching OCLC and editing bibliographic records. I certainly have become a more careful typist, to avoid retyping the long or complicated field changes that accommodate the cataloging idiosyncrasies of my library. But given the choice between charting the unknown of a new version of software or continuing my familiar, if contorted, drills using all of my available digits in a coordinated keyboard dance, I opt for the more complicated safety of a familiar stream of fixed and variable fields rather than risk eliciting the “Message not clear” warning.