ACRL News Issue (B) of College & Research Libraries


COORDINATOR OF AUTOMATED LIBRARY SERVICES 
TO SERVE IOWA’S STATE UNIVERSITIES

Charles R. Sage, presently Vice-President 
and Director of SHARE Research Corporation, 
Santa Barbara, California, and formerly a sen­
ior systems analyst at the Ames AEC Laboratory 
at Iowa State University, has been named the 
new Coordinator of Automated Library Serv­
ices for the three state universities of Iowa. 
Approved by the State Board of Regents, the 
unusual new position will be the first joint ap­
pointment for the three institutions and their 
libraries. Although Iowa’s state university li­
braries have long engaged in cooperative ac­
tivities, the joint appointment is designed to 
allow coordinated efforts in automation and to 
avoid duplication and control costs. Sage, with 
a wide background in computerization and in­
formation science, will engage in a study of 
automation needs and make recommendations 
for coordinated library systems development. 
Additional benefits are expected to be attained 
during the study as other non-automated op­
erations are brought under analysis.

Operating from a central office at the Iowa 
State University library, Sage will share his 
time equally among the libraries of the Uni­
versity of Iowa, Iowa State and the University

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of Northern Iowa. Computerized techniques 
are already in partial use by the Iowa State 
and University of Iowa libraries and compu­
tation and data processing centers at all three 
state campuses make administrative, research 
and teaching use of computers. Rapid national 
development in automation and the establish­
ment of programs and data networks in many 
fields of knowledge will allow the three Iowa 
universities working in consort to coordinate 
systems and will assist in expanding their avail­
able resources to meet growing educational 
needs.

The new Coordinator will be responsible to 
the present Interinstitutional Committee of li­
brarians and will work closely with library 
and campus computation and data processing 
center staff members. His salary and other 
expenses will be jointly shared by the three 
universities. While at the Ames Laboratory, 
Sage was the principal designer of the Ames 
Selective Dissemination of Information (SD I) 
System originally developed for scientists and 
engineers affiliated with the Ames Laboratory 
of the Atomic Energy Commission facilities. 
The SDI System provides a computerized cur­
rent awareness service designed to increase 
literature searching capabilities for researchers. 
The Atomic Energy Commission has made 
the system available to the Iowa State Uni­
versity Computation Center and on July 1, 
1969, this service will be extended to the 
campus faculty on a cost-sharing basis.

CORNELL PROGRAM
Cornell University libraries has started a 

program designed to foster a better under­
standing of the events of April 19 and follow­
ing at Cornell. The libraries’ Oral History Pro­
gram and University Archives are cooperating 
in the project which will be undertaken in 
two phases. The first is the collection and or­
ganizing of written materials pertaining to 
events preceding and following the seizure of 
Willard Straight Hall by Cornell black stu­
dents on April 19. The second phase is the use 
of oral history interviews to obtain pertinent 
data not obtained in the first phase. The ma­
terials are being collected with the expectation 
that the events will be of interest to scholars 
and the general public for many years, Gould 
P. Colman, director of the Oral History Pro­
gram, said. Materials being sought include not 
only reports on dramatic events such as the 
Willard Straight seizure, but also reports on 
formal or informal meetings where the gov­
ernance of the University was discussed.

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