Online Catalogs and Library Users

I want to begin by reading two letters to you which were published in the 1 April 1985 issue of Time magazine under the heading LIBRARY BYTES. The first letter, from Kenneth N. Sharpe of Peachtree City, Georgia, asked a question: I see a conspiracy in the public library. Advocates of computers convinced us that we should replace benign, inexpensive, non-energy consuming card catalogs with expensive, maintenance-requiring, energy-consuming terminals. This is progress? 1 James A. Munn in Milwaukee writes with another opinion: Each time I work on a computer, I am amazed at the potential it has and the abundance of information I am able to retrieve. For the experienced user, the joy of a computer is in finding valuable information by surprise.published or submitted for publicatio