Jessica L. Harris

Columbia university school of library service system for thesaurus development and maintenance

Abstract A system for computer-based thesaurus production and maintenance has been developed at Columbia University School of Library Service. The system is highly flexible, providing for all the types of data elements which have been used in both thesauri and subject heading lists, with additional features found to be useful as a result of the ongoing research program at Columbia. Three thesauri in widely varying subject fields are in the final stages of production under the system. As a result of the simultaneous development of the thesauri (based on actual indexing universes) and of the production system, which is part of a larger program of research in information handling problems, a variety of new techniques and procedures have been developed as their usefulness became evident.

A Computer-Based Census and Local Handlist System for Incunabula

TTe project described here was undertaken because it represented a type of approach to automation in the research library which, it seems to us, has largely been neglected. This approach consists of using the computer to provide more and/or better access to materials and information than has traditionally been available to scholars, as opposed to the apparently prevailing efforts of librarians simply to automate what they are already doing. At the School of Library Service, Columbia University, for example, other exploratory work on the application of the same program series described here to a range of types of materials such as government documents, microforms, and such multi-media materials as broadsides, films, filmstrips, and phono-records indicates that the same kind of combination of bibliography and library cataloging would also be fruitful for these materials which, like incunabula, have been comparatively neglected up to now for lack of both funds and agreed-upon procedures. Indeed, it was only the existence of our general-purpose bibliographic program series which made this developmental project possible.