Computer Assisted Book-Lending System for the Blind.

 

Introduction

 The Nederlandsche Blindenbibliotheek (Dutch Library for the Blind) has been lending books to the blind since 1895. We started off with braille books only. In 1958 talking books on open-reel tapes were introduced and the number of readers increased rapidly. Nowadays we mainly lend talking books on compact cassettes. The talking book on compact cassette is by far the easiest to use and especially many elderly people benefitted from it. Since we introduced the compact cassette in 1972 the lending figures raised from 0.6 million to 2.2 million in 1978. Evidently this rapid growth imposed great changes on our library. In the early days a team of a few people registered the books in the catalogue, lent them to the blind and put them back on the shelves when they were returned. At the moment three departments are in charge of all this: The catalogue department registers books in the catalogue and selects books to be added to our collection. The lending department selects the books to be lent to a given reader on a given day; this department is also responsible for all the lending administration. The expedition department sends the books selected by the lending department to the readers, registers the books returned, checks these books for damage and put them back in the store.

These departments of course closely work together. Large piles of cards and long lists with numbers are passed from one department to the other. However cards may get in disorder and sometimes lists are lost. In view of this and in view of the shortage of personnel we decided to extend computer services to the process of • book registration and book lending. Since 1970 our library has been active in the field of computerised braille. In 1975 a lending administration system was designed that made use of our mini computer (PDP-8 of Digital Equipment Corporation). It was installed in 1976 and hitherto operates rather successfully. Encouraged by the experience with the small lending administration system and urged by the rapid growth of lending figures (over 30% a year), the decision was taken to set up a much larger computer-assisted book lending and book registration system. The computer will get involved in many relevant domains: It will hold the complete catalogue, it will do all lending administration and it will log the books sent out or returned. This new system is developed on a somewhat larger mini computer (PDP11/34 of Digital Equipment Corporation). We will start using parts of it in summer 1978. The system is planned to be completed before summer 1979. 

This article discussed the above mentioned book lending and book registration system. It will not contain many technical details. Its aim is to point out the over-all system design and the interaction between different parts of the system. Moreover attention will be paid to questions like: How will users communicate to the system, how can they force it to do what they want, and what kind of information is available for the users.

2. Current book lending activities

As soon as new readers subscribe to the library they receive a couple of books. They also can buy a catalogue of books, so that readers can make up their minds about the books they wish to read. A complete catalogue is brought out once every five years, supplement lists are submitted to all readers every 3 months. New readers have to answer a questionnaire, which asks them a number of personal data and the genera of books they are interested in. Libraries for the blind differ from ordinary public libraries in that the readers do not normally visit the library to exchange their books. On the contrary, our readers live all over the country and as they are visually impaired travelling is difficult for most of them. They receive and return their books by post. This fact heavily bears upon the work in our library. As a rule readers want to receive new books when they return the books they finished. As they are unable to come to the library and make their choice from the books currently in stack, the selection of books for readers must be performed by personnel of the library. This is the main task of the lending department. 

How do we select books for our readers? 

As pointed out above, catalogue and supplement lists are at the disposal of our readers. The catalogue is available in ink print only, supplement lists are edited in braille, in ink print and recorded on compact cassette. From this material the reader may decide which books he wishes to read. Readers may write down the number of these books and send them - either in braille or in ink print - to our lending department. From these lists the so-called preferent wishroll is computed for each reader. Some readers have several hundreds of numbers on their preferent wishrolls; most readers (about 70%) never ask for any special book and hence have an empty preferent wishroll. When selecting books for a reader, we first look if books on his preferent wishroll are currently in stock. If they are, such books are sent. If the readers1 preferent wishroll is empty, or if none of the books on it is in stock, the lender has to make a choice for the reader. This is quite a job. First a book must be found that hope fully suits the taste of the reader and could be of his desire. Here the genera of interest indicated on the sub scription form can be used as a guide-line. Also criteria such as age, sex and education are taken into account, as is any other knowledge the lender might have on the reading behaviour of this particular reader. Once such a book is found, it must be checked whether the reader has received this book before. To achieve this we keep track of the socalled reader history. The history of a reader is a list of all books the reader ever lent from our library. Any book lent to the reader is added to this list. Before selecting a book for a reader the lender checks if it does not occur in the readers1 history yet. Such a check is of course superfluous when lending books from a preferent wishroll. Finally it must be checked if the book chosen is actually in stock at this moment. If not, everything must be repeated. The number of the book selected is put on the mailing list together with the name and address of the reader to whom it must be sent. Before discussing the work of the expedition department in some detail we have to spend some words on the package of our books. We have developed a special box for our books on compact cassettes. This so-called Hulshof box measures 26 x 24 x 2 centimetres and can hold up to six cassettes. If a book consists of more than six cassettes two or more boxes are required. Bottom and lid pf a Hulshof box are tied together with elastic bands. The title and author of the book are written on the lid. The box number is denoted at the side, where it can be seen when the box is stored iji the warehouse. The box number is composed of a 5-digit book number, a copy letter (of some books we use over twenty copies), and a 1-digit sequence number (1, 2,,.. if this box is tbe first, second, ... box of the book). the lid of the box there is a window in which an address card can be shifted. One side of the card contains the readers' address, on the other side the address of the library is denoted. The reader may take the address card out and put it back in, the other side upward, in order to return the box. Books are mailed and stored in these boxes; the box belongs to the book. Each day the books returned arrive at the expedition department. First all books are registered on the return list. This is the list of readers (name and address) together with all the books they returned on a given day. After registration the address cards are removed and stored in the address stack. The books are checked for damage and completeness. If cassettes are missing, the books are set aside in the case for incomplete books, where they may easily be found should a missing cassette be returned later on. If cassettes are to be mended, these are passed to our department for repair. The remainder of such a book is held apart. Books that are in order are stored in the warehouse again. Mailing is straightforward. The books indicated on the mailing list are fetched from the shelves, the address cards are inserted, whereafter the books are ready to be sent by post. There are of course many exceptions to this general order. Such as: readers who do visit the library andwant to take books with them, or readers who temporarily do not want to receive books. For clarity we left out such details.

3. Files 

Before going into the operation of the lending and registration system, we shall introduce some of the files stored in the computer memory. Though we feel that the discussion of these files, before telling what they are used for, is a bit tough, we think that an early presenta tion of this chapter will facilitate referring to its contents later on. One may think of the files we talk about as large piles of cards. The contents of these cards are stored in the computer memory and there they may be retrieved in some tenths of a second. Data written on the cards in a file are available to programs wishing to use them. Of course the contents of individual cards can be shown on a computer terminal. Like ordinary cards, the cards in these files can be deleted, replaced, modified or extended. The only different is, that modifying is possible as much as required. The previous text does not leave any dirt on the card. fn These are the relevant files in our system: readerdescription file, book-description file, reader/book relation file, book-copy file. 

Reader-description file

This file contains a card for each reader subscribed to the library. On the cards in this file information specific to each reader is written. For instance: name, address, sex, education, general of interest, accounting information. Furthermore on these cards some room is pre served for special information for the lending soft-ware. Last but not least, there is room for a message. This room will be used by the lenders to denote remarks of the reader. In the good old days they used to write such remarks on small notes clipped on the carton cards.

Book-description file 

This file contains a card for each title available in the library. The cards hold information specific to each title. This is first of all the kind of information librarians want to see in a catalogue. One thing added is room for accounting information. This may for instance be used to perform popularity measurements. 

Reader/book relation file

This is the crucial file in the lending system. It contains a card for each reader subscribed to the library. On these cards the numbers of all books the reader is somehow in relation with are denoted. Four types of relation are distinguished. (a) The books the reader has ever borrowed from the library; they constitute the readers' history. (b) The books currently lent to the reader. (c) The books the reader himself has selected and indicated on his preferent wishroll. (d) Books the lender has selected for the reader in advance. They constitute the nonpreferent wishroll. It seems efficient that a lender selects books for a reader in advance (see chapter 4). If on a given day no books of the preferent wishroll can be lent to the reader, nonpreferent wishes may be used instead

Book-copy file

 In this file a card for each copy (not for each title!) is present. This card tells where a copy is, and sometimes where it was before. A copy is either available in the stack, or in repair, or incomplete, or lent to a reader, or lost. In either case the reader that last had (still has) the copy in loan is denoted.

4. Book lending

 On the new system several lenders may be active simultaneously. Each lender is equipped with a computer terminal, preferably a visual display (a television screen and keyboard). The computer holds in its memory a list of readers to be treated (refer to the next chapter to see how it got there). Three types of readers are distinguished: those who require hand-service; those who can do with semi-automatic service; those who can automatically be served. At each instant of time the lender may switch a reader from either of these three states into another. So if automatic service no longer seems appropriate for a given reader, the lender resets its state to hand- or semi automatic service. But if hand-service amounts to nodding "yes" to the computers' proposals, the lender may desire to switch the state to (semi-)automatic. But don't go too fast, let us explain. Hand-service When the lender types the "who next" signal to the computer, the computer presents the next reader from the list. It types the readers' number, name and address, his genera of interest, the number of books the reader still has in loan. Moreover, the computer indicates whether wishes are selectable. If no wishes are selectable this does not necessarily imply that no wishes are present on the readers' wishroll; it merely indicates that none of them is in stock at this moment. Finally, if a message is "clipped" to the reader card it is printed. The lender may now ask for book descriptions in, order to choose books for the reader. He may either ask for books from the readers wishroll (presumed lendabie wishes are available), or he may ask for books belonging to the readers genera of interest, or he may himself indicate the numbers of the book he wants to see the description of. The computer will now start proposing books. It types title and author on the terminal. If the lender wants to see more, the annotation and if required any other catalogue information is added. Once a book description has been presented, the lender must type "yes" or "no" to indicate whether or not the book will be sent to the reader. This continues until the lender decides that enough books have been selected for this reader. At that time he types the "who next" signal and the subsequent reader will be treated. It is the systems' responsibility to update the im plied changes in the reader/book relation file and the book-copy file, Moreover, all books selected are together with the readers address etc., added to the mailing queue in the computer memory. They will eventually be found there by someone of the expedition department, who then is in charge of actually sending the book to the reader. 

Semi-automatic service 

If a reader has so many wishes (preferent or non preferent) on his wishroll, that, as a rule selectable wishes are available for him, the lender may desire to switch his state to semi-automatic. Semi-automatic service is much the same as hand-service. It only requires less lender intervention. On the "who next" signal from the lender the system responds by listing general information on the reader, just as it does in the case of hand-service. This time the computer does not wait after listing the general information. It immediately continues by presenting book descriptions of lendabie wishes. Preferent wishes are presented first. The only activity required from the lender is typing "yes" or "no" to the proposed books. If on a given day the number of selectable wishes would be insufficient the computer will automatically turn over to the hand-lending procedure.

Automatic service

 Once we are accustomed to semi-automatic lending, we might go even a step further and introduce automatic lending. If enough selectable wishes are available, there seems to be no reason why the computer could not itself select the books to be sent to the reader. This will certainly turn out to be the fastest and most efficient lending technique. It is important to stress that automatic book lending is restricted to the selection of wishes from the wishroll, We do not expect a machine to be able to select books on the basis of such general criteria like "genera of interest". If on a given day not enough wishes are in stock, the computer will turn over to the hand-lending procedure and request the lender to do the job.

Preferent/nonpreferent books 

In the reader/book relation we distinguish between preferent and nonpreferent books. Preferent books are those that once were ordered for by the reader himself. Preferent books are opposed to nonpreferent books, i.e., books selected by the lender. This distinction plays an important role in the selection of wishes to be sent to the reader. When the computer checks the in-stack availability of wishes in order to propose them for lending, it will check and pro pose preferent wishes first. Of course, if ever possible, we like to lend preferent wishes to our readers. The lender may list the preferent books of a reader (even those from his history) to catch an idea of the readers' interests and taste. An overview of all preferent books bares information on the popularity of certain (genera of) books. This is important library information.

Gains 

There are a number of obvious small advantages in the new system. The lender no longer needs to write or type lists, he no longer uses lists and cards and is rid of shuffling sheets of paper and piles of cards all over his table. Alas, these advantages will probably be compensated for by small inconveniences, e.g., the inaccessibility of information in computer-down time. A large gain in hand- and semiautomatic lending is the computer check for the in-stack availability of books. Currently the lender spoils much time by studying cards of books that afterwards turn out not to be in stack at this moment. Checking the in-stack availability of books (especially wishes) will be done by the computer before the lender has spent any time studying the book card, and does no longer require any of the lenders' time. We feel that the largest gains lie in the application of automatic lending techniques. Moreover, not only the efficiency but also the quality of the service to our readers will be improved, especially for those who do not choose the book themselves (no preferent wishes). To arrive at these gains the lender must lend books to the reader in advance. These books will be stored in the reader/book relation file as nonpreferent wishes. A special program will be developed to aid the lender with this in-advance lending. It will highly resemble the hand-lending program. First the lender specifies the reader to whom he wants to lend books in advance. The program responds by presenting the general information on the reader. Next the lender may ask for book descriptions. He may either ask for books of a genus the reader is interested in, or he may himself indicate the numbers of books to be described. The computer checks if the selected books are present in the readers' history. If so; the book is re jected, if not, the lender may type "yes" or "no" to it. If the lender types "yes" the book is added to the reader/ book relation file as a nonpreferent wish for this reader. The advantage of this lending technique is, that books are selected at an instant of time that nobody is waiting for them. It need not be done in a hurry. Moreover, the lender may select quite an amount of books at a time, for instance forty or more. This makes it more worthwhile carefully studying the information on the reader, thereby not only increasing efficiency but also the quality of the service. At the end of this chapter we again must emphasise that we have only pointed out the general course of affairs A host of small tools in the system remained untouched, such as, programs for counting all kinds of things, pro grams for adding reader-indicated wishes to the reader/ book relation file, programs for adding and removing books and readers to and from the files, book reservation software.

The system must be able to handle a number of peculiarities: readers who suddenly call for books without returning books, readers who want to stop reading for a while, readers who want to receive their books on a temporary address (holidays).

5. The expedition department - electronic book registration 

Each day the expedition department registers all books returned on a long list. This list is keyed into the computer in order that the system marks the book copies returned as "in-stack" again. Before writing their numbers onto the list, the books (we should say boxes) are sorted. In this way incomplete books are easily found. An incom plete book is a book, the reader did not return all boxes from. Incompletely returned copies are of course not lendabie. They are put on special shelves, waiting there until the reader returns the remaining boxes. All these registration tasks will be minimised by the introduction of an electronic registration device. This so-called scan-a-bar consists of a lamp, some loops and magic electronics. It is able to "read" specially encoded "bar-code" labels. A bar-code label holds a stretch of vertical bars. By making the bars thinner and thicker information can be encoded. All our book boxes will be provided with a bar-code label containing their box number, i.e., the book number, the copy letter and the sequence number of the box. Moreover we add a check digit at the bar-code label, so that reading errors may be detected. The scan-a-bar is mounted in a specially designed table. It is connected to the computer. When the boxes slide over the table, the device registers the box number and sends it to the computer. When the bar-code is not understood, or another reading error is detected, the device notifies the operator by raising a threshold at the end of the table. The operator may then key in the box number on the terminal and take appropriate measures

Once the computer knows all the boxes returned on a given day, it sorts them in order to find out which copies were returned incompletely and which others possibly became complete again. There is no need any longer to treat in complete copies separately; the system will prevent lending of incomplete copies. Before marking the books returned as "in-stack" again, the system waits for the check results of the expedition department. As we told, all books returned are checked for damaged or missing cassettes. If there are, the box is repaired, i.e., new cassettes are played and added to the box. The expedition department announces all boxes in repair to the computer. Books of which boxes are in repair cannot of course be lent. From the set of boxes returned the system computes a list of readers who need books. This list is fed to the book lending software. Output of the lending software is a mailing list for the expedition department. It indicates book copies (book number and copy letter) together with the address of the reader to whom a copy must be sent. The mailing list is, if desired in small parts, printed on a computer terminal located at the expedition department. Printing is started on request, so that people can ask for a list at the moment they are ready to treat it. This reduces the chance of papers getting lost.

6. The catalogue file

 In the future the complete catalogue will be brought into the computer memory. It will contain all information normally found in a catalogue system. The catalogue file will be composed of catalogue cards, one for each book in the library. A number of socalled pointer cards will be added to cope with special desires. The information on the catalogue cards is subdivided in fields so as to increase retrievability of specific data. Each field is identified by its field identifier and as a rule has a rather rigid structure. Important fields are: 

1. author fields (up to three fields holding the names of the authors of the book)
2. title field (holding the title of the book and its keyword for sorting); 
3. contents description; 
4. genus indication.

The catalogue file may be investigated by the person nel of the library using any of the computer terminals. It may be used to render information about the collection as a whole (possibly important for the selection of new books to be added to the collection), but it may also be used to find certain books, books of certain authors, or books of a certain genus (e.g. all books of certain authors, or books of a certain genus (e.g. all detective stories). The latter may improve the service to the reader, as it may facilitate answering some of his questions. The pointer cards are added to solve some very peculiar retrieval problems. Let us give an example. Think of a trilogy having some title, of which each of the three component novels has its own other title. For each of these novels a catalogue card exists, whereas a pointer card is added to achieve the possibility of finding the books under the trilogy title. Similar situations occur with omnibus editions. The most advantageous application of the catalogue system will probably be in the book lending process. There the catalogue information, especially the genus of the book, is combined with the in-stack list of that moment and with the history of the reader under concern. The computer may be used to preselect books, belonging to the genera of interest of the reader, currently in stack and not yet read by this reader. This optimises the work of the lender. Moreover, author, title and all other catalogue information is immediately available to the lender. Finally we must mention the possibility of printing out (parts of) the catalogue. A sophisticated system could provide complete catalogues (sorted to title, to author, or to book number), supplement lists, or selections from the catalogue. Last but not least it is worthwhile noting that the print-out can be given in ink print as well as in braille. Multiplication will be no problem.

7. Conclusions 

Why did we write this paper? First of all for our own benefit. The best ideas come up when talking about things. On the other hand, we believe that a number of libraries for the blind is about to utilise a computer in their book lending system, or will be forced to do so before long. They might benefit from our design, or at least this paper might stimulate a fruitful discussion. We have not discussed a system in operation. We started developing it in April 1978. The administration system must be in the air in August 1978. The system is planned to be in full operation, except for the catalogue pring out facilities, in January 1979. Catalogue printing must be added before July 1979. We work on the project with two programmers. Programs are developed on the hard ware on which the system is to run: a PDP 11/34, a large 6 3 megabyte disk, a lineprinter, a magnetic tape unit and a number of terminals. The investments were $75,000 for the computer and its peripherals, and $20,000 for the UNIX timesharing system. UNIX is the software package (operating system) on which we based our lending system. Although this is a paper on future developments we mainly stuck to ideas for which the software was already designed. Sometimes we mentioned possibilities that, we feel, are just behind the horizon. When writing a paper like this, one is tempted to think about the future. What will be the task of our library over some ten years and what will it look like? Let us make some guesses. The technical developments most relevant for us probably are the braille display and the public data terminal. A cheap data terminal connected to a braille display will make quite an amount of public information available^ to those of our readers capable of reading braille. This will help for stuff like newspapers etc., and it will certainly affect the demand for material in braille, albeit on paper or recorded on braille-coded tape cassette. The demand for talking books will probably go upward until it has settled as the alternative reading means, not only for the blind, but for all those who have troubles in reading ink print texts. Once house to house data traffic has become in common use, great progress in our lending system can be made. At that time we could make our catalogue system and our in-stack list accessible via a datanet. The reader could use his terminal at home to search our catalogue and instack list. He could select the book of his choice and order the system to place book such and such on the mailing list for him. This would almost make our library as accessible for our readers as public libraries are for sighted. (Note one tricky point: blind, unable to read braille, would probably need someone to assist with the operation of the data terminal). Back to our feet again. We are aware of the fact that the system we described will look different once it is in operation. Nevertheless we hope to have pointed out the possibilities that are at hand in the immediate future.