Digital Commons Network^™

Full-Text Retrieval: Systems And Files, Carol Tenopir

School of Information Sciences -- Faculty Publications and Other Works

Much of the development in the first 30 years of library automation has been in solving the problem of identifying relevant sources. Automation of the library's card catalog provides a finding tool for the library's collections. The books, journals, films, and other materials located through the catalog still mostly reside in their original form, with no direct connection to the automated finding tool.

Most of the early development in electronic publishing was also aimed solely at identifying information sources. Secondary publishers, notably publishers of indexing/abstracting serials, were the first to provide their resources in electronic form. Throughout the 1970s and …