ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries January 1989 / 23 potential long-term disaster of the continued set­ tling and sinking of the main library through the purchase of new and lighter carpet w ith no p ad­ ding, to help reduce the load on the building. T hat was being coupled, of course, w ith the inevitable creation of a special task force to make further cre­ ative plans. Sometimes, naturally, the best humor is unin­ tentional, as was the case w ith the recent descrip­ tion of an important meeting at the University of Notre Dame Libraries in Mosaic, in which it was reported that the meeting moved expeditiously be­ cause “the agenda was busy,” leaving the imagina­ tive reader to w onder w here th e agenda was, whether “busy” was just another excuse for a sick day, and if there was some w ay the agenda could perpetually be “busy” as a w ay of improving all meetings. T hat gaffe even achieved notoriety for Mosaic through mention in the infamous “Margi­ nalia” column of The Chronicle o f Higher Educa­ tion (November 23, 1988) w ith the editorial com­ ment: “We’ll call it back later.” For better—as is sometimes the case—or for worse—as is more often the case—library staff newsletters allow us to demonstrate our creativity, and to publish our hum or, in ways th at no other as- Feeling funny? Lighten up folks! The initial response to my request for examples of academic library hu­ mor was encouraging, if not overwhelming, but of late I have been receiving contributions only from the usual crew. There must be more of you out there. Additional examples are des­ perately w anted for this column, for my library hum or archives (the only one of its kind in the world), and for my amusement. I am especially interested in a representative sample of library staff newsletters, to help prove my theory that such newsletters are the original source of all li­ brary humor, but please don’t put me on your perm anent mailing list unless I subsequently ask you to. For future columns inform ation about humor and music libraries, as well as cre­ ative stories about such staples as pencil sharp­ eners, plants, and staff refrigerators, are high on my w ant list. I am also seeking—ugh! — examples of library poetry even though I know it is bound to be bad. New business cards from academic librarians have also been few and far between. For a possible future column, and for my collection, I am most interested in examples (signed and dated on the verso) th at demon­ strate originality and creativity. Contributions and business cards may be sent to the address shown on my personal business card below. pect of our professional life, and no other element of our professional literature, permits. In that re­ spect such newsletters play an im portant role both in lightening the work of the library and in demon­ strating our truest abilities. By Kitty J. Mackey Circulation Librarian Converse College The problem The problem was overdue notices. As circulation librarian in a medium-sized college library, the most time-consuming task under my direction was the weekly generation of overdue notices. In our non-automated library the manual tasks of sorting overdues, filling out fine slips, updating the no­ tices, and typing the notices and envelopes were as­ signed to student assistants under my charge. These tasks frequently required up to 40 of my 140 stu­ dent assistant hours each week. The error rate of transposed call numbers, misspelled names, and “claims returned” items was high, and the stan­ d ard three-part overdue notices used were expen­ sive. Yet overdues are too im portant to ignore, and prom pt generation of overdue notices yields a high Automating overdues in a non-automated library: The HyperCard solution January 1989 / 25 return rate and saves time and paperwork down the road. How could I: 1) design an efficient overdue process? 2) catch the interest of student assistants assigned to overdues? 3) eliminate repetitive manual processes associ­ ated with overdue notices? The search for a solution The ideal solution of course was to autom ate the library—but this was neither practical nor possible at this point. The next solution was to find an over­ due program w ritte n sp ecific ally for non- automated libraries, which would run on the Cir­ culation Departm ent’s powerful new Macintosh SE. After surveying the literature and spending several afternoons on the telephone w ith vendors, I began to suspect that such a program was not avail­ able. “Call back in six m onths,” one well-known vendor told me; “Put your hands on an Apple lie and I can fix you right up,” another told me; “Why do you have a Macintosh anyway? Get yourself an IBM and we’ll get you going,” yet another said. One possibility I investigated closely was Open Stack, a $5.00 library automation program w ritten for HyperCard a n d a v a ila b le from W alk in g Shadow Press. Although Open Stack is an impres­ sive accumulation of programming th at can han­ dle acquisitions, cataloging, and circulation func­ tions, it is more suited to smaller libraries than to our collection of 167,000 items. However, I had been scrutinizing HyperCard since its first appear­ ance in 1987, and had developed a great respect for this deceivingly powerful piece of software which Apple packs free w ith the Macintosh. A closer ex­ amination of Open Stack revealed that HyperCard was the perfect answer to my problem and th at H y­ per talk, HyperCard's programming language was easy to learn. Thus I embarked on a project to de­ sign my own overdue program . The HyperCard solution True to the spirit of Apple computers, Hyper­ Card's basic instructions are w ritten in everyday language and symbols which the average user can quickly master. Information in HyperCard is orga­ nized by subject or task, and stored in files called “stacks.” Each stack is actually a set of “cards” (just like electronic Rolodex cards) in which the user can flip forward or backward, browse quickly, or sort, among other functions. “Buttons,” which can ap­ pear either as words or as symbols, are the work­ horses of HyperCard; your click is their command. The literal beauty of HyperCard is th at cards can be designed to accept either text or graphics or both; “background” graphics and text can be added to give cards a more fam iliar appearance. On-screen instructions can be w ritten out as briefly or as fully as necessary. HyperCard has several features that make it a logical choice for the program I developed, Over­ due Writer. First, there is no limit to the number of cards one can have in a stack, a necessary require­ m ent when building a database of any type. (Of course, the storage capacity of the computer itself m ay be limiting. HyperCard runs best when used w ith no less than a 20MB hard disk.) Second, a SORT feature allows cards to be sorted by specified criteria. Third, w ith HyperCard's FIND feature the user can enter a word or value in the message box, and HyperCard will go to the card in the stack containing th at piece of information. HyperCard's newest version (1.2) has enhanced the FIND func­ tion and allows a FIND W HOLE option, which will search for an exact match to a string of words. This FIND W HOLE function is one of the corner­ stones of Overdue Writer. The fourth and last reason for using HyperCard was the programming ease it offers. I am not a com puter program m er, bu t I have had enough program m ing experience to know th at a similar program in COBOL or even in BASIC would have taken me at least six months to w rite—assuming th at I had the expertise. Using HyperCard's HELP stack and borrowing ideas from pre-existing stacks and buttons, I learned HyperCard's scripting lan­ guage as I was designing Overdue W riter, one function at a time. Although there are enhance­ ments still to be made, the program was generating overdues just two weeks after I launched into the project. It has been a long time coming, but with HyperCard, average users finally have the power to make the machines fit us. An overview of Overdue Writer Overdue Writer is based on two main stacks: a Patron Registration Stack and an Overdue Notice Stack. The P atron Registration Stack is a database of all library borrowers, and includes the informa­ tion previously stored on our paper Rolodex plus a little more. Since student assistants do most of the work w ith overdues, it is im portant that the “look” of the stack be fam iliar and self-explanatory. Thus, each “field” (space for a specific type of informa­ tion) is clearly identified and on-screen instructions provide direction. W hen instructions are too lengthy to put on the card itself, the H ELP button becomes an invalu­ able tool. Cards in the Patron Registration Stack have a button which when clicked will cause the current screen to disappear and be replaced with a screen on which the different patron codes are de­ scribed. Clicking another button will return the user to the original Patron Registration card. The ease of creating such on-screen help options elimi­ nates the need for a paper procedure manual. The real labor-saving buttons in the Patron Reg­ istration Stack are the “Click here to copy patron nam e...” arrows, which when clicked will create a new card in the Overdue Notice Stack and copy the patron’s name, address, and social security number onto the appropriate fields in the new overdue no­ 26 / C &R L News tice card. The Overdue Notice Stack is the second stack on which Overdue W riter is based. Patron informa­ tion is automatically transferred from the Patron Registration Stack, thus eliminating typing errors and redundancy. The text field for overdue infor­ mation is a scrolling field, which provides the flexi­ bility needed to accommodate patrons w ith one overdue item or thirty, as well as books w ith longer call numbers or titles. There is simply no limit to the amount of information th a t can be included in this field, yet it takes up less th an a third of the total screen. The Overdue Stack also contains a field for keep­ ing track of how many notices a patron has been sent and their mailing dates. Clicking in the box next to the First Notice, Second Notice, or Third Notice buttons will enter the day’s date on the screen. Not only will this date be transferred to the final printout of the overdue, but Overdue Writer allows the user to sort the overdue notices by First Notice date, a handy feature for updating the over­ due files. One weakness w ith HyperCard is the limited op­ tion for printing information from stacks in a re­ port format. Although HyperCard's print report features are more than adequate for printing out working copies of stacks to use for checking the shelves or other in-house chores, none of the print report formats are of sufficient quality to use as a final copy for mailing to patrons. Printing each card as shown on the screen and using that as the final copy was an option, but again not an accept­ able one; information in scrolling fields would be lost and on-screen user prompts would have to be limited and hidden. The solution chosen was Ac­ tivision’s Reports, a very versatile program that makes up for the prin t report weakness in Hyper­ Card. W ith Reports I was able to create my own design for an overdue notice, including a simple ink­ saving letterhead, space for overdue item informa­ tion, and a space for name and address which will show through a windowed envelope. Once the lay­ out is created it can be edited if needed, but more im portantly, w ith just a click of the mouse the printer can be left alone to do w hat previously re­ quired hours of manual typing. The overdue process, step-by-step Once overdue items have been identified, circu­ lation cards are sorted manually by patron library card number. The circulation assistant enters H y­ perCard's Home C ard and clicks on the picture (icon) for Overdue Writer. This takes the circula­ tion assistant to the introduction card of the Patron Registration Stack. Using the FIN D W HOLE fea­ ture on the screen, the circulation assistant enters the patron’s library card number. The card for that patron will appear on the screen. The circulation assistant checks to make sure th a t this patron is sup­ posed to receive overdue notices (faculty do not) and checks for any special notes in the message field. If overdues are to be sent, the circulation as­ sistant simply clicks on the appropriate “Copy in­ formation to Overdue Notice” arrow to transfer the patron’s name, social security num ber, and address to a blank card in the Overdue Notice Stack. An overdue notice card will now appear on the screen for this patron. Inform ation on overdue items is added to the scrolling text field and the First Notice box is checked which makes the day’s date appear. The circulation assistant then clicks a button to go back to the patron registration file and repeats the process until notices have been made for all the overdue items. Second and third notices can be updated quickly and simultaneously. The circulation assistant sim­ ply goes through the stack card by card, verifies th a t the items are still overdue (by cross-checking the circulation cards), and clicks the appropriate notice button (i.e. Second Notice or Third Notice) to enter the current date. If the “T hird Notice” but­ ton is checked, an additional message informing the patron of the minimum price of the overdue m aterial and the billing date (two weeks hence) ap­ pears on the screen. Overdue notices for which First, Second, and T hird Notices have already been sent are copied to a third stack not yet mentioned, the Billing Stack, by clicking the “Send For Billing” Icon. The cards for these notices are then deleted from the current stack in order to save printing time and costs. To print out the stack of first, second, and third notices, the user clicks the Reports icon, then chooses PRINT from the options given. Reports will then take over the process until all the cards in the stack have been printed. The notices are then ready to be separated and inserted into windowed envelopes. At the end of each month cards in the Billing Stack are updated w ith the date and replacement costs and items still unreturned are checked against the shelves. Using Reports, a billing list is printed and sent to the college Business Office. In the m anual files I still have not found a way of getting the necessity of having a fine slip attached to each circulation card. These fine slips not only serve as a record for unpaid fines—a necessity in a college where students regularly charge their li­ brary fines home—b ut when they are collected in a box as overdue items are returned, they provide an easy w ay to clear retu rn ed m aterials from the Overdue Notice Stack. After some experimenting w ith letting Reports generate fine slips, I’ve found th a t it’s still easier to use the standard self-adhesive type fine slips—only now I’ve abbreviated the pro­ cess to include only the library card number, call n u m b er, ab breviated title, and the due date, which can be copied quickly from the circulation card. W hen the com puter notices are updated and mailed, the fine slips on the circulation cards are January 1989 / 27 also updated by manually filling in the date in the hancem ent I would like to add to Overdue Writer is to use a digital scanner for inputting book infor­ mation; this would completely eliminate typing from the overdue process and would save even more time.) There is a fourth intangible benefit as well: stu­ dents who formerly simply performed tasks are now receiving an education in computer literacy— no small asset in today’s world. Before embarking on O verdue W r ite r students m ust first w ork through the Macintosh tutorial disk, achieve some competency w ith M acW rite and MacDraw, and work through HyperCard’s tutorial. I hope that by the end of the year at least one of them will be w rit­ ing her own overdue stacks or making enhance­ ments to Overdue Writer. Then I will know that this clerical chore has been transformed into an ed­ ucational experience not only for myself, but also for my student assistants. This is my ultim ate goal as an educator. Overdue W riter is available for $5.00 (the price of a disk, package, and postage) from the author. W rite Kitty Mackey, Mickel L ibrary, Converse College, Spartanburg, SC 29301. Personalizations and enhancements to Overdue W riter are perm it­ ted and encouraged. ■ ■ appropriate notice box. As materials are returned, circulation assistants complete the fine slips with the date returned, the fines due, and w hether or not fines were paid. The fine slips are then put in a box at the circulation desk and are used to update the overdue notices in Overdue Writer. To update notices in Overdue Writer, the circu­ lation assistant u tilizes th e F IN D or F IN D WHOLE features to look up the call number of the item or the patron’s number in the Overdue Stack. The item is deleted from the notice; if all items of a notice have been deleted the notice itself is deleted from the Overdue Stack. If the fine has been paid the fine slip is thrown away; if the fine is to be charged, the circulation assistant sends a postcard to inform the patron of the fine and files the slip in a manual billing file. Thus the cycle of materials control comes full circle through a “manually autom ated” set of pro­ cedures. The three objectives I set out to achieve Aave been met: the overdue process is more effi­ cient, students are eager to work w ith the com­ puter, and the repetitive transcribing processes have been cut to a minimum. The entire overdue process requires less than ten hours per week, a full quarter of the time previously required. (One en­ Fourth U.S.-Japan Conference on Libraries and Information Science The fourth in a series of irregularly held confer­ ences of academic librarians from the U.S. and Ja­ pan was held at the Wingspread Conference Cen­ ter in Racine, Wisconsin, Oct. 3-6, 1988. Entitled “Strengthening the U .S.-Japan L ibrary Partner­ ship in the Global Information Flow ,” the confer­ ence followed thirteen years after the third, which was held in Kyoto in 1975. E arlier meetings had convened in 1969 and 1972. To support the meeting, ALA received grants and services valued at $100,000 from the Japan- United States F riendship Commission and the Johnson Foundation. Conference co-chairs were: Theodore F. Welch, director of libraries at Northern Illinois University and chair of the ALA Advisory Committee on Liai­ son with Japanese Libraries; and H aruo Kuroda, professor, Faculty of Science, and university li­ brarian at the University of Tokyo. Seventy-two li­ brarians and educators met to consider conserva­ tion and p reserv atio n , d atab a se and netw ork development in the U.S. and Japan, development and application of CJK files in the U.S. and the de­ velopment and application of MARC/JIS stan­ dards in Japan. Major U.S. speakers were Patricia Battin, presi­ dent of the Commission on Preservation and Ac­ cess; John H aeger, Research L ibraries G roup (RLG); H enriette Avram, L ibrary of Congress; and Rowland C.W . Brown, OCLC. From Japan, the major speakers were Toru Sugawara, Waseda University Library; Masatoshi Shibukawa of Keio University Mita Information Center; Jun Adachi, National Center for Science Information System (NACSIS); Eiichi Kurahashi, University of Tokyo Library; Hisafumi Tanaka, NACSIS; and Kimio Ohno, Hokkaido University Library. The format of the meeting included general ses­ sions, in which simultaneous translation was avail­ able, and discussion groups, in which translation followed paragraph by paragraph as the speaker paused. One im pact of this procedure was to drive home how serious a barrier language can be. Even in this optimal translation situation, the need for patience was great and misunderstandings were still possible. At least one major breakthrough occurred at the Conference, when key participants came to an un­ derstanding about the CJK character set and an agreement on implementation. Nine resolutions were drafted on the final day. They represent measures to strengthen cooperative 25 / C&RL News relationships between university libraries in Japan should be promoted. 7) There should be further study of the need, scope of service, and linkage modalities of net­ works in both countries. 8) Appropriate clauses in the copyright law of the tw o countries governing copy services provided in lieu of ILL should continue to be protected. 9) Future conferees should consider issues re­ lated to the production of databases and the result­ ing need for resource sharing in the special libraries context. This conference has serious implications for aca­ demic librarians on both sides of the Pacific. The im portance of Japan as a partner in exchanges of information in the future cannot be ignored, as it has been for too long. O ur recent recognition of the beauties of Japanese culture must be broadened to include the burgeoning scientific and technological developments and, most practically, to promote th e need for know ledge of th e Japanese la n ­ guage. ■ ■ and the U.S. 1) A fifth conference should be convened in Ja­ pan; date, them e and topics to be determined by representatives; size similar to the fourth. 2) Small-scale meetings on specialized topics will be convened as needed on an ad hoc basis. 3) To promote the international flow of CJK bib­ liographic data, delegates urged respect for the de­ velopment of language processing capabilities most appropriate to the countries of East Asia and the freedom of each country to develop its own na­ tional standards. Liaisons should be established. 4) Libraries in Japan and the U.S. should en­ deavor to raise the consciousness of society and take specific actions regarding the use of acid-free p a­ per. Exchange of information should be promoted. 5) Libraries in Japan and the U.S. will endeavor to help each other in their respective collection de­ velopment activities for both Japanese and U.S. publications. 6) Mutual use of the two countries’ databases ACRL executive summary On November 11-13, 1988, division representa­ tives, staff, and members of ALA’s COPES Com­ m ittee and the ALA Executive Board met to work out some of the basic provisions of a new “operat­ ing agreement” between ALA and its divisions. While many details remain to be negotiated, sev­ eral significant essentials were agreed upon by those present and will be brought to a larger forum at the Midwinter Meeting. Some of the issues are: • A clarification of ALA financial fundam en­ tals: w hat do dues pay for? •M oving some items from the category of ALA indirect costs to division direct costs. • A framework for supporting divisions when they have financial problems. •A n outline for the w ritten agreement. Some of us left the meeting feeling for the first time th at there may be a new operating agreement in our lifetime! Amid all the hullabaloo and sandwiched in be­ tw een meeting preparation, the meeting itself, and a Thanksgiving holiday, ACRL marched bravely forw ard tow ard its planned goals. Professional development Planning for the Cincinnati conference contin­ ued on target. ACRL staff and the Conference Ex­ ecutive Committee visited the Conference Center and the hotels in November, and the preliminary program was mailed. Sales of exhibit space are ex­ cellent. See the sections on the Conference in this issue. Planning is underway for the RBMS Cambridge Conference. Conference chair William Joyce and his committee have been working on logistics and are well along on plans for speakers and a trade fair th at will emphasize the antiquarian book trade. More active marketing of awards resulted in a som ewhat larger num ber of nominations being subm itted for ACRL’s prestigious awards. Invitations have been sent for the Humanities Program m ing Workshop for Historically Black Colleges and Universities and their communities, co-sponsored w ith the Public Library Association and funded by the National Endowm ent for the Humanities. Enhancing service capability Advisory services continued to keep ACRL staff members on their toes. More than 40 calls from mem bers and others—not all librarians—tested our reference skills in areas relating to academic li­ brary services, standards, advisory committees, ac­ creditation, collection developm ent, buildings, funding formulas, serials, and planning. President Joe Boissé and his program committee have been examining the future of higher educa­ tion for a “Think Tank” meeting in Cincinnati that will pave the way for the President’s Program at the ALA Annual Conference in Dallas in June. The collection of statistics on non-ARL univer­ sity libraries is underway, w ith a non-print version of the statistics being considered. A proposal is under development for a study of the sources of revenue in academ ic libraries. It would be carried out by the ALA Office for Re­