Technical Services Workstations: A Review of the State of the Art

Abstract

The technical services workstation is an evolving technology. In its fully evolved state, it consists of a higher-end personal computer that is networked to local online systems, bibliographic utilities, and the Internet. It has available to it all the typical administrative tools associated with local area network (LAN) technology. A suite of technical services resources has been or is being developed to complement it, including the Library of Congress Cataloger’s Desktop, LC Classification, and Dewey Decimal Classification. A number of institutions are placing local or standard, national-level documentation on the Internet in hypertext markup language (HTML) form. Enhancements such as macro-driven processing are becoming common. With the advent of fully functional Windows terminal emulation programs for bibliographic networks, the promise of multiple online sessions is becoming a reality. Other Windows terminal emulators and interfaces and Windows clients will be appearing soon, and Z39.50 clients are starting to appear bundled in with their packages.