Book Reviews 261

Library Automation at the Polytechnic of the South Bank. (Case Studies in Library Automation). D. F. W. HAWES and D. .4. BOTTEN. Library Association, England; distributed in North America by Oryx Press (1983). 132 pp., $25.00, ISBN O-85365-944-3.

Through Oryx Press of Phoenix, Arizona, The Library Association of Great Britain brings us a continuing series entitled, Case Studies in Library Automation. Each volume of the series, except the first, examines a different library’s implementation of an automated system. The first study in the series considers a number of cases from special libraries and serves as an overview of library automation in Great Britain. Every other study in the series is authored by a person intimately involved in the planning and actualizing of the system being studied, frequently from the earliest stages of brainstorming.

The series is planned to include studies of academic, public and special libraries, as well as library cooperatives, and to deal with a wide variety of system applications. It is hoped that because the studies are written by the librarians involved, the reasons for choices made regarding systems and vendors, time frames, employee hour allocations and costs will be easily conveyed to the reader of the series.

Each of the volumes considered here is a history of the planning and development of an integrated, automated system at a single library, or, in the case of Derbyshire, a network of libraries. They are all examples of the type of volume produced in this series with excellent support documentation and highly readable narratives.

Bagley and Oyston’s Automation in a Polytechnic Library: Fifteen Years’ Development at Hatfield is divided into two parts. The first part covers the development of the library’s own batch mode cataloguing and circulation system from the start of the database, using available UK conversion sources, to realization of the need for integration into a larger online network. Part Two examines the decisions surrounding the choice of network in terms of the needs of Hatfield. A group called SWALCAP, South Western Academic Library Cooperative Automation Project, was chosen because of its experience in online cataloguing and circulation systems and because of its flexibility of features. The entire Hatfield system is then reviewed in the remaining chapters, concentrating on the successful incorporation of SWALCAP. An aid to American readers and those unfamiliar with the jargon of library automation in Great Britain is the glossary defining UK and European networks and systems such as STEIN and HERTIS.

In Automation in Derbyshire County Libraries, Gratton prefaces an extensive document file with a wordy history of automation development that occurred in the county after the county decided to reorganize local government and merge the catalogs from five county libraries. The narrative is often slowed by sentences such as: “The library is a complex creature within which is and will be stored the world’s knowledge and an account of man’s behavior since it was possible to record them and for as long as it remains possible for these things to be recorded.” Much of the documentation in the volume, which is separated from the narrative, centers around the correspondence between county officials and librarians, with firm avowals by all to “keep each other posted”. The value of this narrative and related documentation is in the way the librarians involved perceived an opportunity and took aggressive advantage of it. This volume is far from a technical account, concentrating instead on organizational and planning issues.

Library Automation at the Polytechnic of the South Bank, by Hawes and Botton, is an excellently organized look at the decisions surrounding and the implementation of a package- based system. If a choice had to be made among these three volumes, this work would have to be chosen above the others. The study begins by detailing the nature and needs of the polytechnic library and moves through the staffs on-site visits to existing systems, and feasibility studies, to the bid process for vendors and final purchase and implementation of the system, all the while documenting the reasons for each planning and purchase decision. The text is interspersed with the relevant documents; and-as in the Hatfield study -a glossary of terms is included.

For American libraries and library schools, purchase of the entire series could be useful, given the proposed diversity of systems to be chronicled. At this stage in the development of automation for many libraries, these sagas of battles planned and won could provide a needed guide to automation planning. Financial questions are not covered to any great extent, which is for the best, since every library’s situation with regard to funds is different. The series affords automation planners the foundations from which to design their own courses of action.

The series is distributed in the U.S. by Oryx Press. Prices for the volumes are: $21 for Hatfield; $20 for Derbyshire; and $24 for the South Bank.

Account Manager JILL SANDERS

Technical Services Division Black-well North America Lake Oswego, Oregon