Microcomputer Database Management Systems That Interface with Online Public Access Catalogs

Since they started to appear in the 1970s, online public access catalogs (OPACs) have developed in sophistication and increased greatly in number. Yet most experts on the subject agree that these OPACs are still clearly in their infancy. One of the areas that has been explored very little in either the literature or the marketplace is the development of microcomputer software packages designed specifically for searching and managing records from OPACs. Uploading and downloading, of course, have been around for some time but have been focused on library automation systems (e.g., derived records from OCLC) and online searching services (e.g., building personal reference files from DIALOG searches).