Online search and retrieval service for journal articles

Despite the ongoing budgetary constraints of the 1970s, the Library moved early to offer clients a mediated online search and retrieval service (provided by librarians) when electronic databases which indexed journal articles started to become available.

At this time, the usual approach was to search by keyword in the volumes of printed indexes to publications (books and journals) in a subject area of interest, a time-consuming task. Librarians could undertake this ‘literature searching’ for academic staff on request. The list of useful references was then checked against the printed listing of journals the Library held to see if the journals containing particular articles were available on the shelves. If not, the holdings of other Western Australian libraries could be checked or the items could be requested via interlibrary loan.

In 1975, Library staff first offered a computer based information service, initially limited to off-line current awareness services run out of the National Library of Australia. Reference staff searched journal indexes on behalf of academic staff, setting up more than twenty current awareness profiles. Only a few online databases were readily available 34 and the connection and reference print costs were high so requests for manual literature searches and interlibrary loans far outnumbered requests for computer searches.

In 1977, WAIT Library became a foundation member of AUSINET (the Australian Information Network) allowing it to expand its online search offerings, making use of large indexing databases to find journal articles and other publications for academic staff.

The following year, it was the first Australian academic library to go online to Lockheed’s DIALOG, the world’s first commercial online information retrieval service. Though expensive, DIALOG offered a broader range of databases especially in the sciences and engineering. As academics made more use of the Library's computer search services, the demand for interlibrary loans grew correspondingly.

As the online searching service expanded, the Library created a new position of Information Retrieval Librarian to manage and promote the service within WAIT and to local industry, as well as training reference staff. There was even activity to create a local database of newspaper based information on AUSINET and this resulted in the National Times being indexed on AUSINET from 1979 to 1986.