URICA: THE BRENT EXPERIENCE

Brent Library Service was the first U.K. public library to purchase URICA. Conventional wisdom suggests that the purchase of an untried computer system is not the smoothest path to computerisation. Why, then, did Brent deliberately adopt such a high‐risk approach? Clearly, any attempt to identify a prime cause for this decision runs the risk of looking further and further into the past. A sensible identification of the starting point for our computerisation project is to be found in 1978.