Presents a summary of the history of academic library automation, and discusses some of the technological trends which are important to the development of an electronic library. Topics discussed include public services vs. technical services; cataloging and classification; serials control; computer networks; cooperative projects, including…

Three decades of applications of information technology and library automation at Ohio University are chronicled in this paper. The first major development highlighted is the founding of OCLC (the Ohio College Library Center) as a cooperative cataloging device in the 1960s. OCLC's growth is traced from when it was a small organization of two staff…