ACRL College & Research Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

MOVING? MARRYING? CHANGING POSITIONS?

Please keep ALA informed when you change your address, your name, or your position.

If you cannot locate your current membership card or seem to have missed issues of your membership publications, please notify ALA.

Remember, it takes several weeks for records changes to become effective. During this period, mail will be sent to your former address.

For any membership records changes or problems, please write:

Membership Records American Library Association 50 East Huron Street Chicago, Illinois 60611

Helen Oustinoff is Assistant Director of the University of Vermont Library. She has developed a remarkable new system for processing books, utilizing our Polaroid CU-5 Close-up Land Camera.

No more checking or transcribing

Here’s how her system works: When a book purchase request slip is received, the searcher looks up the book in the National Union Catalog or another standard bibliography. Just as always. But she doesn't bother to correct or complete the slip. She simply photographs the entire N.U.C. entry with the CU-5 Camera.

We make that sound very easy. It is. You just center the CU-5's frame over the entry and squeeze the trigger. Pull the tabs and 15 seconds later you have an enlarged print of the whole thing. (Like the one below.) Isn’t that easier than copying by hand? And faster? And more accurate?

No handwriting to decipher

Now the book order slip is typed from the Polaroid print. And the print is then filed away with a carbon of the typed order.

If the original entry happens to be in Hebrew, or something else untypable, you can simply shoot an extra print and send it along with the order.

When the book is received, it’s checked against the print and the invoice is cleared.

No waiting for catalog cards

Who needs preprinted catalog cards? With this new system, you make your own. Using the Polaroid print as a guide, you can type them on an automatic typewriter. Or simply add necessary information to the print and run it through a copying machine.

The system also gets books into circulation faster because it eliminates waiting for preprinted cards. It also eliminates the job of ordering them. And the cost.

For more information about the time and cost saving features of this library system, write to: Polaroid Corporation, Dept. 113, Cambridge, Mass. 02139.

And if you have any suggestions as to new uses for our CU-5 Camera, send them along.

Who knows? You might be our next ad.

POLAROID CU-5 LIBRARY CAMERA