FREE online courses on the Basics of a Computer - COMPUTER APPLICATIONS -
Libraries and Museums
Increasing use is now being made
of computers in library organization. Lists of borrowed books are maintained by
the system and reminders for those which are overdue can be generated by
computer output. A tally of the number of times books are taken can be kept.
More significant is the number of various ways that the contents of the library
may be referenced with computer assistance for the benefit of users. Not only
can all the books be classified by subject matter but, by page and paragraph
references, information relating to particular topics within the subject can be
pin-pointed. This has particular implications for legal and technical libraries
where detailed references frequently have to be made and cross-references are of
considerable value. Some university libraries in North America
are linked to a Network so that an obscure document in a distant archive can be
quickly located and, in some cases, photocopies can then be telexed over a wide
area.
Museums are also making use of
computers to help with cataloguing and indexing. Information about the exhibits
in a museum's collection is assembled and retained as a large data base, and the
information retrieval capability of the computer can then be exploited to the
benefit of staff and visitors. Some museums are linked in a communications
networks to allow the exchange of information between different computerized
museum data bases.
