Book Reviews

The Linked Systems Project: A Networking Tool for Li- braries. Judith G. Fenly and Beacher Wiggins, Eds. Dublin, OH: OCLC Online Computer Library Center, Inc.; 1988: 138 pp. (ISBN O-933418-35-3 series; l-55653-039-0).

This is an important, valuable book. I recommend it to any- one interested in library automation or computer networking. The book will serve as a fine tutorial on the Linked Systems Project and on some aspects of the NISO 239.50 information retrieval protocol, a national standard that was born in work done under the auspices of the Project. It also does a nice job of presenting some of the history of the Linked Systems Project and some of the management and organizational considerations that surround such a cooperative effort. Even important but seldom-discussed topics, such as the costs of applying the technology that arises from the Linked Systems Project, are considered. One particular strength of the book is that it offers readers interested in the ef- fect of the project on libraries, rather than the project’s technol- ogy, a vivid picture of the Linked Systems Project in operation.

It is important for the reader who uses this book as an intro- duction to broader subjects, such as computer networking for li- braries and applications of NISO 239.50, to understand the book’s limitations. The introduction directly defines the book’s scope: “This monograph is meant to be a full treatment of the Linked Systems Project (LSP). The contributors have been se- lected from among the nation’s leading authorities and from among staff of current LSP implementors.” But many readers may not deduce what information is omitted from the book’s cov- erage. Any following discussion of the book’s scope is not a criti- cism of the book itself, but is an attempt to help the reader place it in a broader context.

The Linked Systems Project originally focused on an attempt to link the major bibliographic utilities-the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), the Research Library Group (RLG), and the Washington Library Network (WLN) - with the Library of Congress (LC) for cooperative cataloging and authority work. In this sense it was a somewhat specialized and insular project, and important to other libraries only as it improved the national cata- loging databases (a real but indirect benefit). The Project was un- dertaken with a great deal of attention to international standards (and in fact cast the participants in a pioneering role with regard to the use and implementation of these standards), but was quite divorced from developments in real, operational networks that were spreading through U.S. academic and research communities starting in the 1980s. Only recently have serious efforts begun to close this gap. The book offers no context for these other devel- opments in networking, particularly in higher education. I believe that a strategic assessment of the Linked Systems Project and its implications must consider these issues. (For a project perspec- tive, see the excellent article by Henriette D. Avram, Building a unified information network, EDUCOM Bulletin, 23, 4, which I wish could have been included in the book under review as part of the Epilogue. For a different, and now slightly dated, view, see Clifford A. Lynch and Edwin B. Brownrigg, The tellecom- munications landscape: 1986, Library Journal, 16, 3. Further, the Linked Systems Project was well underway when it became

0 1990 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

evident that a key piece of the technology developed by the Project (the applications-layer protocol that ultimately became the NISO 239.50 information retrieval standard) had potential appli- cations that affected every library and university. While there is some passing discussion of other uses for 239.50, the book’s pre- dominant emphasis is on the Linked Systems Project itself.

In this book, one reads the history and status of the project as written by the participating institutions; there is little attempt at really critical evaluation of the project, the standards, or the pro- cess involved. With the exception of a chapter on LSP costs writ- ten by David F. Bishop of the University of Illinois and a (very brief) chapter on the AVIAC perspective on the Linked Systems Project written by Joseph R. Matthews, all the chapters in the book are written by people at the Library of Congress, OCLC, and RLG. (It is never made clear exactly where WLN currently stands with regard to the project.) While these authors are indeed in a position to address their topics authoritatively, there is a defi- nite bias in the discussions. In this book one finds no questioning of the basic assumptions that were established a decade ago and which have guided the Linked Systems Project since, for ex- ample, and there are issues related to these assumptions that should be discussed as the library community looks towards the future. Further, it would have been interesting and valuable to read the authors’ thoughts on what they would do differently to- day, to look down paths not taken by the project, and to hear about what didn’t work as well as the project’s successes.

The book contains twelve chapters, an Epilogue and a “se- lected” (short) bibliography on the Linked Systems project; there is no index. The book is nicely produced, and makes extensive use of diagrams and figures to illustrate the chapters. I will dis- cuss the chapters individually.

The first chapter, by Henriette D. Avram and Beacher Wiggins of the Library of Congress, introduces the Project and sets it in an historical context back to the mid-1970s. The historical material here is fascinating and demonstrates that in a sense the Project was the culmination of many years of national planning under the leadership of LC. I wish this chapter had been much longer and more detailed as much of this prehistory may not be familiar to those who entered the library automation field after 1980.

The second chapter, by Sally H. McCallum of LC, provides a broad overview of the project, and includes a particularly clear description of the project’s Record Transfer Protocol (which is not part of the 239.50 standard). The discussion of the informa- tion retrieval protocol here is a bit too brief, and the reader will need to supplement this material with other chapters for a proper overview. I found the discussion of interlibrary loan (ILL) proto- cols and message-based systems somewhat confusing; a fuller discussion of the important issue of message-based systems would have been helpful here, within some broader context of why such systems might be needed.

Chapter 3, by Ray Denenberg of LC, provides a very good in- troduction to the IS0 Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) proto- col concepts as they are implemented by the Linked Systems Project, and also as they are implemented in some other (nonpro- ject) applications-layer protocols such as File Transfer Access and Management (FTAM). The chapter also discusses testing of implementations of the Project’s protocol suite, and of the efforts currently underway to migrate the Linked System Project’s proto-

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co1 implementations into conformance with international stan- dards. (These differ in part because the project froze certain protocol specifications for implementation prior to standardiza- tion.) This chapter may be somewhat heavy going for some read- ers, but provides a good introduction to the world of 0%. This chapter in particular would have benefited from a bibliography.

Chapter 4, by Judith G. Fenly and John R. James of LC, gives a clear discussion of the Record Transfer Protocol in opera- tion from the perspective of bibliographic databases rather than networks. The following chapter, by Ed Glazier of RLG, looks at some of the same issues from an RLG perspective. These two chapters will give a reader familiar with bibliographic databases a very good sense of how multiple databases can interact through record transfer without getting into the technicalities of computer networking.

Chapter 6, by Kathleen Bales of RLG, and 7, by Linda Arret and Sally H. McCallum of LC, discuss the information retrieval application. Bales’ chapter is much too brief (seven pages) and gives only superficial coverage of the IR protocol; it does not cover areas such as interface with the IS0 presentation layer, se- mantic issues, or error handling very well. The chapter by Arret and McCallum gives a good sense of what the IR protocol looks like from LC’s system, and touches on some very important is- sues about intersystem semantics through the example of personal name interpretation at LC and RLG. All in all, I felt that these two chapters, which give primary coverage of the information re- trieval protocol, are the weakest part of the book when judged against the book’s intended scope. Much more coverage of the functioning and implementation issues involved in the IR proto- col would have been appropriate. (Although, to be totally fair, while the IR protocol technology coming out of the project may have the greatest long-term impact and thus, I think, deserves ex- tensive coverage, it is only a modest part of the project. Record transfer may be of greater importance to the project’s goals.) Also, somewhat surprisingly, these two chapters do not cover the important differences between the IR protocol as implemented currently in the project and the NISO 239.50 standard. While Denenberg’s Chapter 3 does touch on this, I think that the reader might have found a more extensive discussion helpful.

Chapters 8, by Joan E. Schuitema of OCLC, and 9, by Larry E. Dixson of LC, return to applications of the tools provided by the Linked Systems Project to cataloging. Again, these chapters provide a good sense of what the Linked Systems Project can contribute to cataloging without going into detail about the func- tioning of the protocols.

Chapter 10, by Lennie Stove1 of RLG, discusses RLG’s expe- rience in developing a record transfer link between RLG and a Geac system installed at New York University. The link appar- ently did not include the IR protocol, at least to allow public ac- cess searching of remote databases. This chapter does offer additional insights on the maintenance of multiple databases using the tools of the Project.

Chapter 11 is a disappointingly brief (three-page) discussion by Joseph R. Matthews (then of Inlex Cot-p) about the need for various types of information interchange required by local sys- tems. This chapter seems to have little to do with the rest of the book, and thus implications of the Linked Systems Project and technology arising from it for local systems are covered in only the most limited way by the book.

Chapter 12, by David F. Bishop of the University of Illinois, is a very thoughtful discussion of the costs of intersystem linking that should be read by library directors and planners concerned about the long-term effects of intersystem linking. The great weakness of this chapter is the lack of any context about telecom- munications costs. For educational institutions, this is closely re- lated to the overall national networking situation, and for public libraries it is a major unaddressed question since it is not clear how most public libraries will find the money to link up to the national computer networks. Unfortunately, this chapter does not

cover development costs. Although it is true that not too many institutions will build protocol implementations from scratch, the Linked Systems Project was one of the first major OS1 imple- mentations and the costs would be of interest to the networking research community.

The Epilogue, by Avram and Wiggins again, gives a brief picture of future objectives that could be achieved within the Linked Systems Project. Primarily, these focus around more ef- fective integration of the bibliographic databases and cataloging activities of OCLC, RLG, and LC, and make it clear that the ac- complishments of the Project to date are only a beginning. Sig- nificantly, there is no discussion of the non-Linked Systems Project use of protocols such as 239.50 to facilitate access to database servers (for example, from user workstations). While these are outside the declared scope of the book, they may ulti- mately prove to be the greatest possibilities arising from the areas pioneered by the Linked Systems Project. (For a discussion of some of these topics, see, for example, Michael K. Buckland and Clifford A. Lynch, National and international implications of the linked systems protocol for online bibliographic systems, Cuta- loging and Classification Quarterly, 8,3/4, 15-34, 1988, and the bibliography therein.)

In summary, this book does an outstanding job of what it sets out to do: to provide an authoritative, highly readable, but rather narrowly focused summary of the Linked Systems Project, a major effort to link the primary bibliographic utilities and the Li- brary of Congress. It explains the history, organization, technol- ogy, and applications so that the interested reader can learn about both technology and applications, or can focus on the applica- tions without becoming overly involved in the underlying tech- nology.

Clifford Lynch Director of Library Automation University of California Office of the President Oakland, CA 94612

The Twenty-First Century; Technology’s Impact on Aca- demic Research and Law Libraries. Betty W. Taylor, Elizabeth B. Mann, and Robert J. Munro. Boston, MA. G. K. Hall; 1988: 235 pp. Price: $37.50, hard cover. (ISBN o-8161-1882-5).

Written as a report on a Council on Library Resources Librar- ian/Faculty grant, this book basically relates the questionnaire used in the research project and methodically sets forth the find- ings. It was written by the principal researchers, Betty W. Taylor and Robert J. Munro, both law librarians, and Elizabeth B. Mann, a professor of library science.

The purpose of the authors is “to present , . . findings and analysis on the impact of technology on the future of academic research and law libraries and fiscal planning in the last decade of the 1900s and the 2OOOs,” and to this end they “designed a series of questions to elicit views . from key decision makers.” The key decision makers they contacted were 740 library science pro- fessors, scientists, library networkers, publishers, Association of Research Libraries (ARL) directors, law deans, and directors of law libraries. The 224 respondents answered approximately 150 questions divided into groups of Events, Library Collections and Automated lnformation , Budgeting, Payment for Automated In- formation Access, Personnel, and Computer Equipment. The questions are listed in an appendix, and a chapter is devoted to the findings. The authors address each question individually and include pie charts where they are helpful. The researchers ana- lyzed and categorized the answers by type of respondent, such as “ARL directors agreed that” or “law deans and law librarians dis- agreed with the whole in that. . ”

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The chapter on findings is followed by one on conclusions in which the authors present a scenario with projections for aca- demic research libraries and one for law libraries, based on the responses to the questionnaires. Two other appendices give the “respondents’ opinions expressed in cross-tables” and “statisti- cally significant differences in respondents’ opinions” for the re- ally statistically minded reader.

The book is very well written, and overall pretty interesting. The most useful chapter in the book is Chapter 1, Contemporary Forecasts, 1980-1987, in which the authors summarize the litera- ture on library forecasts. There are some really fascinating thoughts in here which can be used as ammunition in requesting funds or justifying a budget by a library director with an eye to the future. The authors bring together much current thinking on the topic.

Their own scenarios, however, are less interesting, and more predictable. Does one really need to conduct a survey to find out that books will continue to be published, or more information will be available in electronic formats, etc.? The two scenarios for the two different types of libraries actually vary very little.

This reviewer questions the very basis of the questionnaire, that the future of libraries can be predicted with any accuracy. Especially in this area of technology, there is no predicting future developments because there is no way to know what the new in- ventions will be. Could one have predicted 20 years ago the need for budgeting for personal computers and CD ROM products in the library budget now? That thought registered, there does still exist a need to attempt to predict, for the sake of budgeting and long-range planning. This book does provide useful material for those involved in projecting for the future.

About the questions used, most of them were very well thought out, although some seemed repetitive and a few were less than clear. For example, several questions addressed the percent- age of materials to be acquired in the future in hard copy in one copy only. This series of questions is confusing, and it would have been helpful if the authors had provided information on what the percentage is currently.

Appendix D lists “Selected Comments of Respondents” and many of the respondents seemed to have had the same trouble as the reviewer had with some of the questions. The selected com- ments do contain some jewels from the respondents, such as one from a law librarian. In response to the question about whether in

the future more people will buy the information they want to read in a computer-based or computer-generated format and will bor- row less from a library, he/she responded: “Not until technology allows for better screens, less eye strain, and people forget how cozy it is to curl up with a book.”

It was interesting to see how the different groups responded to the questions as a group. For example, law deans and law li- brarians seemed to have a totally different view of the world from ARL directors. This, of course, could have been predicted. Be- cause of LEXIS and WESTLAW. full-text electronic legal data bases, law libraries have more fully adapted to automation as a group than any other type of library. It was fun for this reviewer, as a law librarian, to read the questions first and then see how personal opinions compared with the opinions of others respond- ing to the survey.

One of the most useful things brought out in the book is that automation has not, to date, brought the expected reduction in costs to provide library services. Catalogers are still gainfully employed, and a MARC-tagged record, if anything, is harder to create than the old typed card. Now there are computer equip- ment costs, costs of peripherals and maintenance contracts, access charges, training charges, etc., to consider. These charges are in addition to, not in place of, previous costs.

There is somewhat of a timeliness problem with the answers to the questionnaire. The grant was awarded and research begun in 1984. The questions were answered in 1985. The book was not available on the market until just recently, late 1988. Many of the questions are addressed to 1990, as if that date were at some dis- tance in the future. By the time the book was published, 1990 was hardly more than a year away, which puts a slightly different per- spective on the question than that which the respondents had in 1985. If this is taken into consideration, it does not detract seri- ously from the value of the projections, however.

Rita Millican Law Library Paul M. Hebert Law Center Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, LA 70803-1010

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