CHOOSING A LIBRARY SYSTEM

There was a time, in the not too distant past, when choosing a library system was more often than not a simple matter of deciding to take the one option on offer, for example, the single commercial system on sale in a library's particular geographical area, or a proposal to develop an “in‐house” system on an existing computer with available capacity. It is conceivable, though perhaps unlikely, that the matter will again become simple and straightforward — if library automation should one day reach a point of development where there are no important new horizons to be explored and all surviving systems can do everything that might be required of them in as many ways as may be required of them, and if library procedures become, as a result of automation, more standardised and more susceptible to automated solutions in general, then a stage may be reached where for a library of a particular type and size there is one recognised choice of system. In current circumstances, however, choosing a system is a complex and difficult task, requiring, at minimum, many months of detailed research. It is safe to say, moreover, that this situation is not likely to alter appreciably in the foreseeable future.