MICRO LIBRARY: AN INTEGRATED SYSTEM FOR SMALL TO MEDIUM SIZED LIBRARIES

Abstract

Micro Library is another newly introduced packaged being aimed at the corporate library and small academic research library environment. It is marketed by SPS Software Services, a division of SP Support Ltd, which in turn is part of Sydney Development. Assiduous readers of VINE may remember a description some two or three years ago of the Easydata Integrated Library System: this was, in origin, a Canadian system, running on networked Datapoint hardware. It was floated rather half heartedly in the UK and then, like others before it, disappeared from the market place. In the interim, Sydney Development bought out Easydata and substantially modified the package. As the EDS it is still supplied, as a minicomputer option, to run on Datapoint kit, but it has also been written to run on the IBM PC/XT and PC/AT, in which guise it is called Micro Library. It is on this version that this account concentrates: the EDS package has additional facilities, particularly in the area of circulation control (fines, flexible parameter tables for loans policies etc) which were not included in Micro Library whose main market is seen as the rather more specialised library with a heavier emphasis on information retrieval within its housekeeping systems. There appears to be an established customer base with pre‐launch sales of Micro Library totalling 25, of which 15 are Esso libraries. (Exxon who designed the EDS with Sydney in 1981 are installing it in their libraries worldwide.)