Page 72 - DLIS007_LIBRARY AUTOMATION

Unit 4: Problems, Evaluation and Trends in Library Automation Software

India, the technical issues of manpower training, procurement of hardware and software, creation Notes
and maintenance of databases, etc., also raise serious hindrances in the way of automation. In the
digital environment, both hardware and software have critical roles to play. As regards the
software requirements, many of the Indian libraries, whether they are financially and technically
sound or not, facing problems such as selection of good software, ensuring standards in the
creation of databases, maintaining and updating the databases, improving the performance of
Information Storage and Retrieval Systems, exchanging data between systems, migrating from
one software to another, etc. The tempo of automation and modernisation of libraries is largely
affected by the bottlenecks created by these issues, and the professionals are finding it difficult
to sort out such problems.
1. Technological Problems: Technological problems include both the hardware, i.e., the
computer as an instrument for information processing and the software, i.e. the
methodology which is applied. The major problems faced today in terms of the hardware
are due to the variety of computers being used in different types of research and business
institutions. The computers, manufactured by various firm are not compatible. Developing
countries sometimes receive sophisticated technology like computers as gifts from more
developed countries; these often become obsolete from the manufacturer’s point of view.

Such machines are not only unsuitable for most complex work but any technical problems
which come up cannot be repaired. Information retrieval work requires machines more
sophisticated than those manufactured indigenously and few imported machines are capable
of handling information retrieval applications.

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Caution The random access facility and disks large enough for storage of bibliographic
information are not readily available.
In most institutions, organizational goal receive priority over the library’s requirements,
meaning that the librarian must use the computer available rather than what is actually
required according to specifications. Library activities in all institutions are done through
sharing disk space as well as computer time. Therefore, when the storage capacity is not
large enough to accommodate various types of data, bibliographic data are given the
lowest priority. On-line facilities are rare in India. In fact, only TIFR’s library has access to
an on-line terminal for bibliographic data, the DEC-1077 computer of the National Centre
for Software Development and Computing Techniques.
The communication infrastructure of India is still not suitable for extensive on-line
information facilities; the telephone system is not reliable enough to support an effective
network facility. Software problems arise because programmes must be developed in
terms of the machine on which they are to operate. Therefore, the incompatibility of
equipment tends to make the software incompatible as well, especially when programmes
are written in machine or assembly language. While using languages which are not machine
bound, such as FORTRAN, COBOL, ALGOL, etc., may seem like a solution, in actual
practice such languages cannot be interchanged without suitable modifications.

Example: A software package developed for the IBM 360 model 30 would require many
changes not only in the programme but also in the programming language if it were to run on
any other computer. Development of a programme suitable for the available machine is therefore
preferable to acceptance of a package programme. This makes the development and use of
package programme difficult and leads to a lack of standardization in programming language
as well as in output. Machine-readable databases are by-products of international information
network systems and are available on magnetic tapes.

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