Friday, January 1, 1904
TECHNOLOGY:
Students can expect more user-friendly, efficient libraryBy Jean
May Chen
Daily Bruin Contributor
Instead of using ORION to look up books, students may soon
access library information on ARTEMIS or YODA.
Planning an overhaul of the current ORION system so vast that it
will need a new name, library officials have begun the momentous
task of creating a new electronic cataloging system for UCLA’s 13
libraries.
"I think we’re going to skip a generation of programs with this
new system. It’s very good," said Stephen Davison, a librarian at
the Music Library.
The ORION that students and faculty now use was programmed at
UCLA in the 1960s. Over the last 30 years, ORION has expanded to
include almost every library function, including purchasing,
cataloging and organizing of books, not to mention the research
functions that students and faculty use.
"ORION was a phenomenal system when it was designed, and way
ahead of its time," said Terry Ryan, associate university
librarian, noting that while the system set the pace in its day, it
doesn’t begin to compare to current technology.
"To move our library into the next century, we need a much more
flexible system," she said.
ORION is currently based on a mainframe-terminal system, with
all searching and processing done by a single, very large computer,
which creates a problem should too many users access the system at
once.
Davison envisions the new system as sharing processing tasks
between one large computer and many smaller computers. The smaller
computers could then pass the results of their searches to
terminals operated by users, whether in the libraries or at
home.
The ORION system is far behind current technology and, in some
instances, in dire need of repair. At some terminals, the delete or
backspace key is unusable, and the left arrow must be used instead.
At other terminals, the return key is also unusable, and the enter
key serves as a replacement.
"A lot of people have problems with the current ORION Â
it’s not very intuitive," said Mike Rudolph, a third-year computer
science student and consultant at the social sciences computing
laboratory.
"Everything’s becoming more user-friendly, and people are
expecting (ORION) to be the same. Most people put off using it
until they have to, and then they have a lot of questions," he
added.
ORION’s text-only display is also unappealing to today’s users,
who have become used to the colorful, graphics-intensive World Wide
Web.
To replace it, the UCLA Library has contracted Data Research
Associates of Missouri to create a new system that should be
operational by December 1997.
Davison said that the new system will be able to search across
many different databases at once, including Melvyl and the
Instructional Media Lab. And it will have the capability to include
audio and video clips when that type of information becomes widely
cataloged.
"Library catalogs are beginning to assume the same shape as
(search engines) we see on the Web," said head College Librarian
Eleanor Mitchell. "There are a lot of decisions to make."
Not the least of these decisions is giving the system a name
that is easy to remember, readily able to be part of a logo, and
not currently copyrighted or trademarked.
According to the library’s Web page, they should be "witty and
classy," something that easily sticks in the user’s mind.
Students can turn in suggestions for new names at the library’s
home page, http://www.libraries.ucla.edu, and soon also at the
College Library.