CD‐ROM as an online public access catalogue Available to Purchase

The provision of information on optical discs has had a relatively short gestation period by comparison with other new technologies, though similar problems—a lack of standardisation, a lack of knowledge of appropriate applications and general uncertainty have all been in evidence. However by 1985 there were clear moves to establish the 12 cm Compact Disk (widely used as a format for audio recordings) as a publishing medium for large bibliographic and data files. At the same time standards for the interfaces for the CD‐ROM (Compact Disk‐Read only Memory) drive and for physical data organisation (known as the High Sierra standard) have helped remove some uncertainty. Perhaps paramount in establishing CD‐ROM have been the relatively low production costs resulting from the high volume of Compact Disks being produced for the audio market.