INTRODUCTION Before a detailed look at online information retrieval, it is useful to take a somewhat broader look into the computer and its implications to the library community.
Many of your children will develop the same relationship to com-
puters that most of us developed to books.
The computer will become a primary
means of access to information, knowledge, and entertainment.
Moreover, develop-
ment of skills in using computers is as important to the person of today as learning to read was to our grandparents. It has only been in the past ten years, however, that computers have come to be used extensively for the manipulation of words (as opposed to the manipulation of numbers).
Most people still think of computers as "number
crunchers"rather than as knowledge machines, and they think of computer programmers as some special type of mathematician. nothing could be further from the truth.
For many applications,
Computers are generalized, code
manipulators where the codes can stand for numbers, letters of the alphabet, or even instructions that tell the machine how to manipulate these codes, or how to communicate with a remote user terminal. versed in organizing and manipulating symbols.
Programmers are people
Educationally they come
from a variety of disciplines. The computer is the machine that made possible what we think of as online services today.
Online services simply represent instances where someone
was able to visualize the applicability of modern day data processing techniques to human needs. human being within
The word "online" implies that there is a
the data processing loop who guides and controls the
computer in performing its assigned tasks, as opposed to "batch" processing wherein once initiated, a given set of tasks processes to completion without human intervention.
The beauty and power of online applications result from
the combining of the strengths of humans - decision making, recognition, reasoning - with those of the computers - rapid manipulation of data. One does not have to be a programmer in order to use the power of the computer. Each online application has associated with it a high-level command language which the user employs to divert the computer in its processing.
Behind
each command, however, are vast numbers o machine instructions written by programmers which carry out the high-level command. high-level command language.
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DIALOG is one such