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I finished up the ALISE conference on Friday by attending a session on library technology history that analyzed e history of intellectual freedom in libraries (it turns out that libraries have reacted in many different ways to intellectual freedom challenges over time) and a history of library automation focused on the work that led to OCLC.

As a systems person myself it was instating to hear about the work from Missouri and Raplh Parker. Parker developed the first automation system to enhance circulation in the 30s and Published the first article on library automation in the de ember 1936 issue of library journal.

I will have to find the names of the presenters as well as the links to their papers but my favorite quote came during the library automation talk and was something to the effect of ‘the installation of the IBM 357 in 1964 reduced checkout time to 4 seconds.’