1980s: Automation

1980s: Automation

The time had come. While students all over campus were listening to The Clash on the Walkman and watching Ferris Bueller’s Day Off on Betamax, real change was afoot in library automation.

During the 1980s the ANU Library introduced the Library information management system URICA, OPACs, AUSMARC, USMARC, AACR2...and the list goes on. If this period was the rise of the machine, it was also the rise of the acronym in library practice.

By the late 1980s, the library “was the second University library to install a CDROM service”1 and academics and postgraduate students had access to the ANU Library catalogue in their campus offices.

“The sequence of change regarding the main catalogue through the traditional cards, to microfiche, and thence to online computer access reflects the Library’s [ongoing] wish to improve user access to information about the Library’s holdings in a decentralised campus…”2 Library automation and its anticipated impact on ANU Library practice as researched and anticipated by former University Librarians and senior Library staff3 was coming to fruition.

1Barry, Tony. “Integrating Electronic Publishing and Information Provision at ANU”, AusWeb95, 1995 http://ausweb.scu.edu.au/aw95/publishing/barry/index.html

2Vidot, Peter Alexander. The History of the Australian National University Library 1946-1996. ANU Library, Canberra 1996:39

3ibid.:40