Much has been written about the impact of digital technology on libraries and the future of libraries. In reality, libraries today are still facing mounting accumulations of paper information and struggling with the methods of organizing and retrieving it. In order to keep up with the growing volume of information and the upsurge of technology, a library that serves the research staff of a high-technology company must keep a balance, being both practical enough to meet today's needs, and quick enough to explore and adopt new tools and techniques. This article describes what a modern research library is doing to accomplish this balance.

2. ENVIRONMENT

The IBM T. J. Watson Research Center ("Watson"), with four sites and 2,500 employees, is one of the leading industrial research laboratories in the world. Its mission is to focus on basic research and technological development in various fields which have long-range importance to IBM. About 2,000 of the employees are technical staff and the remainder are support personnel. More than 1,000 of them have doctorate degrees in science or engineering. The research center also hosts many visit-ing scientists, professors and university students. Our library user community is a combination of these various people.
 

Different users have different expectations of library and information services. Many of our users are renowned researchers in their fields. They produce the best and demand nothing but the best. On a daily basis, some of the them expect all the journals to be checked in and displayed by a certain hour for them to browse and thumb through. If the journals are not to be found, they go directly to the journal check-in office and demand to know why the journals are not there. Others act as if they expect books to jump out of the terminals right after they press the key making a request. We have researchers leaving for a meeting in 10 minutes, needing information for the meeting. We also have developers who need analyzed and packaged marketing information to determine the scope and potential possibilities of their projects.

We have a mix of "I'll do it myself" and "please do it for me" patrons. The atmosphere is a com-bination of a university-like scholarly research center and a high technology development laboratory. The rapid development of information technology has created high expectations for information services.

3. ORGANIZATION

Organizationally, IBM is a decentralized company. Each division operates independently and has its own library. The Watson Research library is the largest of a group of about 50 IBM internal libraries that serve the IBM technical community at the various development and manufacturing sites throughout the world. Although the libraries are not centrally managed, they work together as a net-work, participating in a strong inter-library loan practice and exchanging ideas via electronic bulletin boards and electronic mail.

Certain information services can be provided most efficiently and economically centrally. Two corporate-wide functions have been developed to offer centralized information services. One is called IBM Technical Information Retrieval Center (ITIRC) and offers ready on-line access to a retrieval system (STAIRS) and databases containing about 2.5 million abstracts of technical reports, journal articles, and many other types of information. It also provides two individual alerting services, regularly notifying subscribers of new information in areas of interest to them. And it manages a document delivery service that allows users to order and receive the full text of (almost) any article that has been abstracted in the database. ITIRC also manages group contracts for, and network access to, commercial database services like Dialog, BRS, Dow Jones, etc.

The second service is Library Processing Center (LPC) which provides central acquisition, cataloging and processing services. It also maintains the central library systems including the internal inter-library loan vehicle and several library databases.

4. WATSON RESEARCH LIBRAY RESOURCES

Our collection consists of 60,000 books, 1,100 journal subscriptions, 50,000 bound volumes, 4,000 university reports, plus a growing numbers of CD-ROM and multimedia products. Due to the changing economic environment and the rising costs of journals we are facing the same financial difficulties as many libraries in the U.S. Our library has been asked to do more with less. We have 4 professional librarians, 2 supporting staff and 4 contract employees who perform most of the cleri-cal work. In addition to the local resources, the library has been depending upon the central ITIRC and LPC services for most of the backroom functions and database access.
 

5. SERVICES

The Watson Research Library is a part of the Technical Information Services department which includes other information-related activities, such as publications, research report processing, re-search calendar, etc. Even though the size of our library might be small compared to many univer-sity libraries, the services we provide are similar. We provide traditional library services, including reference services, online literature searching, etc. We have tried, as much as we can, to provide library services electronically. For example, the users, if they choose, can rely entirely on our on-line catalog to handle their book loan activities, including making and cancelling requests, viewing and renewing loans, etc. We also have made things like photocopy request from and literature search request form available to our users electronically at their desks.

On the other hand, the primary information sources -- journals, conference proceedings and books -- must still be handled physically. To our users, "access" is not enough; they need to have the full text articles in their hands. Until electronic publishing of full text becomes a reality, we have to keep physical collections where they are needed. Our mathematical science department, which is not near the library, relies heavily on journals and books for their research. The library routes all the mathematical journals to them as soon as they are checked in. Books are sent back and forth by mail.

In addition to making sure all the needed journals and conference proceedings are subscribed to and received on time, several current information awareness services have been developed to ensure that users get the information quickly. These services, CIS (current information selection), QAS (quick alert services) and overnight document services will be described in the next section.

6. SYSTEMS

The computing and communication infrastructure for electronic library service - at least, an early version - is widespread. The Research division took an early lead in making interactive computer terminals available in every office. Now any IBM office worker has access to a computer terminal or LAN connected workstation. Because the system has developed over a number of years, many terminals are still oriented towards mainframe connections, text displays and commands. But current trends away from the mainframe, towards much greater computing power with graphical displays and multimedia presentations at the user's desk have resulted in a shift to LAN connected work-stations and a re-thinking of how electronic library services should be presented.

Networks within IBM include a file-transfer network (RCSC-driven), having over 4,000 network addresses, and two interactive networks. The file-transfer network is used universally for electronic mail, and handles about 5 million files per week. In addition, there are gateways to the IBM Infor-mation Network (IIN) and the Internet. These gates are used extensively for access to commercial information services, such as Dialog, BRS, Dow Jones, Faxon, etc. and also for use of electronic bulletin boards, e-mail, etc.

Library information service systems have been acquired and developed with two main objectives in mind. Some are intended primarily to reduce the clerical load of the library staff. The other com-ponent of our systems development is directed towards more comprehensive at-desk library services. The latter is the direction that almost all library planners recognize, and about which our users and management are most vocal.

We will concentrate now on describing a few selected user-oriented services which have been designed and developed to deliver information quickly to the user's desktop.

6.1. INFO

INFO brings up an information menu that serves as a 'title-page' to a site handbook. It offers a guide to information about a wide variety of site facts, people to contact, various services, and invocation of other computer programs. Each information section is updated by the sponsor of the service. Library services are included.
 

6.2. ADLIB

From the library menu users can invoke ADLIB (At Desk LIBrary) which is the online catalog of the library's holdings. It is intimately connected to the circulation system, Library Management System. A user of ADLIB can search the holdings, request and renew loans, view a new books bulletin and review his/her loan status. The system responds to the requests by sending canned notes to requesters online letting them know the status of each request -- requester has been placed in the reserve queue, the book will be sent, etc.

If users need information beyond that which INFO can provide, invoking INFOGATE will connect them to ITIRC INFOGATE.
 

6.3. INFOGATE

INFOGATE is the user interface that communicates with the remote database server run by ITIRC. This connects users to a full-text search system (STAIRS) with a group of databases con-taining about 2.5 million abstracts of articles from journals and proceedings, reports, video tapes, patents, and book and journal holdings. It also has databases for competitive information, daily world news in the computing industry and business, etc. It uses an interactive network to couple a user-interface program with a database server at one site and it can be invoked directly from the local computing environment. An important design goal for the interface was ease-of-use for the new or infrequent user. That goal seems to have been met, and user evaluation has been very favorable.

Available on over 350 network node machines in the U. S. INFOGATE has over 30,000 regis-tered users. and handles requests from over 300 client machines in the United States. It is available throughout the company, and Watson is the biggest user. There are also database servers for INFOGATE in England and in Japan.
 

6.4. IIN (IBM Information Network)

IBM Information Network provides access to outside databases. With management approval every user can have access to vendor services such as BRS, DIALOG, DOWJONES, etc. The users can search these vendors' databases and download files. Some users have learned how to use these databases and enjoy conducting their own searches while the majority of them still prefer to have searches done for them by librarians.

6.5. CIS (Current awareness service) and CISVIEW

CIS is an automatic customized alert services which any IBM employee can subscribe to. At Watson users subscribe to this service by working with a librarian to establish an interest profile using proper keywords. The profile is run against the ITIRC databases when the databases are updated, selecting abstracts for the subscriber. The abstracts are transmitted to the subscriber elec-tronically and received and viewed by using the command, CISVIEW. Orders for the full text article can be placed by pressing a function key while viewing the abstracts.
 

6.6 QAS (Quick Alert Service)

QAS is an online table-of-contents service which is similar to CIS. Instead of keywords, QAS profiles are by journal titles. A user can invoke QAS on the command line and go through an easy-to-use process to select journals according to his interests for his profile. When the ITIRC databases are updated, he will receive the table-of-contents electronically. As with CIS, he can place orders for the full text articles by pressing a function key while viewing the table-of-contents.

7. DOCUMENT DELIVERY

A major step in the progress toward an electronic library is the ability to view not just the abstract, but the full text and graphics of a document on the user's screen. This is one of the objectives that our users and management are pressing to see. We are making progress, in several steps, towards that goal. Right now the orders for full text articles generated by users of INFOGATE, CIS and QAS are transmitted electronically to one of several suppliers. At the moment the paper copies are distributed through the mail.

In order to ensure the best turn around time, we have established an overnight photocopy service. If the request is for an article from a journal held by the Watson Research Library, the order is trans-mitted to a vendor working at the library at night. Copies are made in the library and delivered to the requester the next day. This service is available to the IBM corporation world-wide. The Watson Research Library's collection satisfies 75% of the requests from all IBM sites.

If an IBM report or patent is requested, then the order is directed to an ITIRC optical disk system, where images of all recent IBM reports and patents are stored. The copy is printed automatically on attached printers, then mailed to the requester. At Watson we deliver over 40,000 research reports a year to both internal and external requesters. We, like ITIRC, also have an optical system which stores the images of all research reports produced by the Research Division. Currently, this system is used for urgent requests for reports from IBM's Research Division. Work is almost complete on a system extension that will send the retrieved images back to a device selected by the requester, now a laser printer and later the requester's workstation.

Our optical disk system is not fast enough now to support interactive viewing, but we view this as the first step in delivering full text documents, complete with figures, electronically to users.

8. FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

As the new technology becomes available to us, we continue to improve and enhance the services we provide our users. Developing services include making the current information systems available from the LAN connected workstations and electronic publishing and distribution of research reports on both the internal network and the Internet. The library is working with a research group to distri-bute multimedia to users in their offices. The library actively expanding its role as the information provider by working closely with the computing systems to develop a global information system using various new technologies to provide users one-stop shopping for information.

9. CONCLUSION

With automated systems and the best priced vendor services, we are able to provide efficient information services with minimum resources. Escalating costs of journals and books provide constant motivation to look for better ways of sharing information and making it available to our clientele. As we continue to evolve, libraries can become the hubs of a personal and electronic network for information access. Librarians' skills will be used to organize and facilitate access to everything from discussions of site news on electronic bulletin boards to multi-media presentations to references and documents on other continents.