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This report presents the results of a survey of users who access the University of California's on line union catalog, the MELVYL library system, via microcomputers with modems or connections carried through local or guide area networks. The report includes descriptive statistics on user location, status, subject interest, affiliation, in-library versus out-of-library usage patterns, need for assistance, and desire for new features.
Use of online public access catalogs from outside the traditional academic library environment is now a common occurrence, The growth of this type of use since the mid-1980s is the result several factors. Chief among these are advances in microcomputer technology and reductions in hardware costs, coupled with the accessibility of local and wide-area electronic networks to greater numbers of scholars. The widespread adoption of the MARC format and the rise of OCLC as a powerful utility for creating and sharing machine-readable data provided the foundation for linking resources with scholars, wherever they might be. John Sack, director of the Data Resources Group at Stanford University, has advised librarians to "assume that extra-library use of library systems will be equivalent in volume to in-library use over the next decade...."(1) The growth of out-of-library use has been dramatic. In 1987, the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) identified and surveyed fifty-seven of its member libraries that reported offering remote access to their online catalogs. The 1988 published report of the survey noted that "remote access to library online catalogs is a viable reality in more than half the ARL libraries."(2)
THE MELVYL LIBRARY SYSTEM
In early 1981, the MELVYL catalog began as a prototype union catalog for the nine campuses of the University of California (UC). The prototype contained bibliographic records for 600,000 unique titles that represented 1,200,000 volumes. Ten video display terminals were installed at each campus to search the database using the patron interface developed by the University of California Division of Library Automation (DLA).(3) In the fall of 1983, DLA began to make available an updatable version of the MELVYL catalog. Current records for monographs cataloged by the campuses on the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) or the Research Libraries Information Network (RLIN) were added within two weeks of receipt, and loading of campus retrospective records began.(4) By February 21, 1991, the...