Page 6
University Daily Kansan, August 22, 1984
THE UNIVERSITY OF KANSAS LIBRARIES ANNOUNCE
THE NEW MICROFICHE CATALOG
Beginning this month, users of the KU Libraries will find two types of catalogs providing access to the collections when KU's traditional card catalog is joined by a new microfiche catalog. The new microfiche catalog will contain records for most books cataloged at KU since January, 1981 for the following libraries: Watson Science, Engineering, Maps, Mathematics and Computer Science, Art, Music, and the Regents Center Library.
The microfiche catalog, which lists hundreds of books on each piece of microfiche, has the advantage of being dramatically more compact than the card catalog. Therefore, the complete microfiche catalog can be made available in all libraries on the campus. Persons in the Science Library, for example, will be able to check the microfiche catalog for recently-cataloged materials in Watson and branch libraries without having to visit
Watson. More than 100 microfiche readers have been located throughout the library system for use by the public, and multiple copies of the microfiche catalog will be available in high-use library locations, such as Watson's main catalog area and the Science Library.
An update of the microfiche catalog will be issued each month, and each update will include catalog records for all materials cataloged since the last issue. Because of the time required to produce and file catalog cards, records of newly-cataloged books will appear sooner in the microfiche catalog than is possible in the card catalog.
The new microfiche catalog is the result of a three-year joint effort by the Libraries and KU's Office of Information Systems. It is being produced from a computerized data base which has been designed to ultimately provide on-line catalog access for the library's users.