University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

From Flow Charting to User Friendly: Technical Services Functions in Retrospect

Henderson, William T.; Henderson, Kathryn Luther

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/1251

Description

Title
From Flow Charting to User Friendly: Technical Services Functions in Retrospect
Author(s)
  • Henderson, William T.
  • Henderson, Kathryn Luther
Issue Date
1988
Keyword(s)
  • Human-computer interaction
  • User interfaces (Computer systems)
Abstract
In this presentation, the proceedings of the twenty-four preceding Clinics on Library Applications of Data Processing will be summarized to give a flavor of the issues and themes relating to technical services functions which have been denned, for purposes of this paper, as: acquisitions, serials control and management, and catalogs and cataloging. In 1963, the world was waking up to a new era of technology influencing many aspects of life. Increased technology was reported to be costing workers their jobs and causing labor unrest. Cited as evidence was the fact that on February 11, 1963, eleven electronic computers took over the jobs of the many people required to tabulate stock market figures in New York for the nationwide wires of the Associated Press (Year, 1963, p. 25). Gordon Cooper was the last of the Project Mercury astronauts to go into orbit. After a successful day and a half in space, the spacecraft's automatic controls went dead, but Cooper landed safely (p. 28). At the University of Illinois on March 2, 1963, the spaceship shaped Assembly Hall was dedicated not only did its shape reflect the times, but it was one of the first buildings in the country to make use of sophisticated computer controls (Thomas Parkinson to Rebecca Hall, WCIA, Channel 3 broadcast, Champaign, Illinois, 5 March 1988). The New International Yearbook for the Year 1963 heralded the development of thirty new commercial digital computer models, most impressive of which was the Control Data Corporation's 6600 with a central memory of 131,000 60-bit words, exceeding in speed and memory capacity all available computers. Noteworthy, too, was a new computer language, FORTRAN IV.
Publisher
Graduate School of Library and Information Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Series/Report Name or Number
Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing (25th : 1988)
ISSN
0069-4789
Type of Resource
text
Language
en
Permalink
http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1251
Copyright and License Information
Copyright owned by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. 1988.

Owning Collections

1988: Design and evaluation of computer/human interfaces : issues for librarians and information scientists PRIMARY
25th Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing (1988). Edited by Martin A. Siegel.
Faculty and Staff Research and Scholarship - Information Sciences
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