Applications of machines to library techniques: Periodicals

Throughout the years librarians have constantly searched for ways of accomplishing their objectives more simply—more directly—more quickly. New and more efficient equipment has frequently been their ally in the race against time and the ever‐mounting quantity of publication. Witness, for instance, the recent revolution in copying methods, which has brought quick‐copy equipment into even the smallest libraries to assure more effective use of resources. Of late a different kind of equipment has been responsible for some profound thinking on the part of librarians. I refer to the machinery which is the central feature of an entire complex of activities known as mechanized data processing. For some time we have wondered if our library operations, which usually involve multitudinous records of repetitious transactions, cannot be speeded and their cost lowered by machine data processing. The question is—how, and which operations? Today's discussion has been undertaken in order to explore the various ways in which punched cards are being used at present in library processing operations. Your speakers today will review library operations which are familiar to all of you and show how these operations have been converted step‐wise into machine operations.