The information Services Librarian*

Libraries appear to be in a period of great change and the major reason for this has been the increasing availability of machine-readable data bases and the information retrieval systems based on these. A number of data bases producers have established networks on national and international level in order to make services from these data bases widely available. The fact that few individual institutions have the level of demand to justify an in house operation of this type led to the development of scientific information dissemination centers and the emergence of on-line, interactive searching capabilities. In relation to machine readable files, the librarian is assuming the role of a broker between library users and a wide range of bibliographic data resources in MR form. Libraries for many years changed comparatively little in terms of their basic capabilities and the type and level of services they provided. Now libraries appear to be in a period of great change and are likely to continue in this period of change for some time. This paper is concerned with one type of change and its implications for library service and for the education and training of librarians. My special concern here is with the role of the library as a supplier of information. The developments I discuss have mostly occurred in the United States but similar developments are occurring now in libraries in many other countries. It would be true to say that industrial and certain other types of special library have offered relatively dynamic information services for some time. By comparison, most academic and public libraries have adopted a relatively passive role in the provision of information service. By this I mean that they have generally waited to be approached by users and have done comparatively little to provide an information service more dynamically on a continuous, unsolicited basis. The extent of information service provided by these libraries has also been limited, usually to the handling of inquiries of a factual or "quick reference" nature and to assisting users themselves in the conduct of more extensive literature searches. Public, academic and even many special libraries have rarely had the time or resources to conduct really comprehensive literature searches for those users who need this level of service. This situation appears to be changing, especially in the academic and special library worlds. The major reason for this has been the increasing availability of machine-readable data bases and of information retrieval systems based on these. Although it was not the first machine-readable bibliographic data base, MEDLARS'* was probably the first such data base to be made widely available in machine-readable (MR) form. MEDLARS tapes were made available by the National Library of Medicine for use by other libraries (MEDLARS centers) as early as 1965. Since then we have seen a phenomenal growth in the availability of MR files. In fact, an unpublished survey conducted in 1972 identified 268 such files, containing bibliographic citations or other data, of possible use to libraries. These data bases span an extremely wide range from very general (e.g., covering all of medicine or all of chemistry), to highly specific (e.g., files on interatomic potentials and on tall buildings). Files of numerical, statistical, physical and chemical data exist in MR form, as well as files that are strictly bibliographic in nature. Keynote address delivered at the First Annual Conference of The Special Libraries Section of the Library of Australia, Canberra, May 12-16, 1974. The Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System of the National Library of Medicine. Ci. Inf., Rio de Janeiro, 5 (1/2) :7-15, 1976 7