The scope of a manual-automated system serving the 40 libraries and the teaching and research community of Stanford University is defined. Also defined are the library operations to be supported and the bibliographic information storage and retrieval capabilities to be provided in the system. Two major projects have been working jointly on library automation and information retrieval since 1968. One is the Bibliographic Automation of Large Library Operations on a Time-sharing System (BALLOTS) funded by the Office of Education and the other is the Stanford Physics Information Retrieval System (SPIRES), funded by the National Science Foundation. The creation of a production system for library automation (BALLOTS II) and generalized information storage and retrieval (SPIRES II) requires the continuation of a comprehensive system development process. This process has six phases: (1) preliminary analysis, (2) detailed analysis, (3) general design, (4) detailed design, (5) implementation and (6) installation. The document represents the main output of the preliminary analysis phase encompassing the definition of goals, description of the user environment, analysis of the existing system, selection of the system scope and establishment of gross technical feasibility of the selected first implementation scope. Included is a 20-page glossary of information science terminology. (MF)