Telecommunications and the research library: a partisan overview

Issue title: Special Telecommunications Issue containing papers from the Texas A&M University Medical Sciences Library Symposium on “Trends in Biomedical Telecommunications: the Electronic Library – A Realistic Appraisal”, March 26–27, 1981

Guest editors: John C. Blair Jr.Guest Editor

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Mignon, Edmond

Affiliations: School of Librarianship, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA

Abstract: A combination of new developments in the technologies of computer storage, data transmission, and image display provides a wide range of powerful and attractive telecommunications-based information services that are widely promoted as a force for the revolutionization of institutional and individual practices in an information-oriented society. Although the magnitude and universality of the impact of these innovations has been well argued, their short-term effect on research libraries is more likely to be a substantial enhancement of these libraries' capacity to meet established patterns of need, rather than a fundamental alteration of the services which they provide. The new technology is typically most advantageous in services involving a high volume of standardized, short messages to homogeneous user-groups. But utilization of the resources of research libraries is characterized by the interpretation of complex and often implicit information-structures by a variety of small user-clienteles with individualized orientations and highly specific objectives.

DOI: 10.3233/ISU-1982-1404

Journal: Information Services & Use, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 207-214, 1982