Within Robertson Library, many core operations and services were labour intensive, particularly in the early 1970s.

The selection, purchase, cataloguing, processing, shelving and reshelving of books and other material occupied large amounts of staff time.

Loans were managed manually, using date stamps, book pockets and borrower cards and the number of loans was huge – rising from 22 000 in 1969 to over 141 000 in 1979.

Until 1980, the book catalogue was a card catalogue which required constant manual updating.

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s the journal catalogue was a printed listing of journals the Library held.

Staff answered over 18 000 client enquiries in 1979 and provided library education classes to 3 450 students.

The bindery was kept busy binding journals and other items for the collection. Typewriters and Xerox machines were still in use.

The Library’s Xerox/photocopying service was well used by patrons, providing copies of some 888 000 pages in 1979, up from 30 600 in 1969.

Principal Librarian Geoffrey Allen recognised that computers had the potential to bring efficiencies to many areas of library operations and to reduce the time staff spent on repetitive routine tasks.