The Cutting Edge: Computing / Technology / Innovation : Libraries Caught in Transition of Computer Age : Technology: Patrons intimidated by on-line databases give up access to a public institution.

For 40 years, Vincent Ronco was an avid patron of the San Francisco Public Library, checking out one or two books every week. But now he has turned away from the library in frustration, victim of a routine technological advance that would appear to be both inevitable and wholly rational: the replacement of the ancient card catalogue indexing system with a modern computer database.

“Since they got rid of the card catalogue, I don’t check out books anymore,” says the 65-year-old retiree. “I just turned in my library card. I don’t know how to use a computer, and I don’t want to be forced to learn.”

The computerization of libraries, in fact, has turned out to be something of a case study of how technological advances can bring about unforeseen--and often negative--consequences. While on-line library indexes have many advantages, they also create many new problems--not the least of which is cutting off access to those who remain intimidated by computers.

These difficulties pose a challenge not only for libraries, but for all public institutions that serve a diverse population. And they also provide a cautionary lesson for many corporations that are engaged in a headlong drive to automate their operations.

“Electronic access is, and always will be, limited to the technologically adept,” warns Steven Black, head of acquisitions at the Bancroft Library of UC Berkeley.

Access is far from the only problem with on-line library catalogues. Software bugs and data entry errors have caused some books to virtually disappear, even as they remain somewhere on the shelves. And on-line systems have in some cases made it more difficult and less enjoyable to do research: They sometimes provide an unwanted avalanche of information, eliminate the handwritten notations of generations of librarians and render impossible the simple pleasure of browsing.

“I like to have all those cards right under my chin. It feels so good to pull out the wooden drawer and feel the papers between my fingers, to smell the scent of the cards and be reminded of how old books are,” says Eddie Oliva, a computer instructor at Ulster Community College in Upstate New York. He uses the on-line catalogue for professional purposes. “But when it comes to personal research, I always choose the traditional card catalogue.”

This isn’t how it was supposed to turn out when the nation’s libraries began computerizing about a decade ago. Computers and libraries seemed an obvious match: A card catalogue, after all, is nothing more than a simple database, the kind computers handle best. Today, an estimated 55% of American public libraries have switched to on-line catalogues, with more converting every day.

Undoubtedly, on-line cataloguing systems offer many advantages. They allow a library patron at one terminal to access collections all over the city--or in some cases, all over the world. They offer information on the book’s status--whether it has been checked out, when it is due back. And they have relieved librarians of the overwhelming task of keeping the card catalogue up to date.

Advanced “multimedia” computers, such as the $4-million on-line system that the San Francisco Public Library finished installing last year, can offer much more.

“For quick and cheap retrieval of multimedia services--both still and moving video images, audio services, magazines, newspapers and books--ours is the system of tomorrow,” says George McBride, coordinator of the automation services of the San Francisco library.

Most librarians, while acknowledging some of the problems that go along with computerized catalogues, praise the on-line systems as essential to helping libraries maintain their place as centers of learning.

Even the proponents of computerized catalogues, however, say the technology has a long way to go. R. Bruce Miller, president-elect of the Library and Information Technology Assn. of the American Library Assn. and assistant university librarian at UC San Diego, points to some key limitations.

“We are not where we should be,” he says. The UCSD system “requires too much of the user. You can’t ask a general question and be guided to an answer. You need to know which database you should be looking in. That demands an expertise of the typical library user that’s just not fair.”

Indeed, a big complaint of on-line catalogue users is that a simple query such as a subject search yields an unmanageably large amount of data.

“If I’m in a library with both a card catalogue and the on-line system, I always use the card catalogue,” says San Francisco library patron Robbin Frey, 40, who is the director of a local dance company. “That way, I don’t have to deal with all the garbage that comes on-screen that has nothing to do with what I’m looking for.”

*

Speed is also a problem: On many systems, response time is very poor. And that, of course, undermines one of the original reasons for having an on-line catalogue in the first place. So do system crashes, which can bring an entire library to a halt.

The obvious answer to many of these problems, of course, would be to keep the old card catalogue alongside the computerized system.

Experts say many types of organizations could benefit from an approach in which computerized systems were viewed as an enhancement to the old way of doing things, rather than a replacement.

Things rarely work that way in the Information Age. But in a gesture to the affection many feel for the old card catalogue, the San Francisco Arts Commission, in collaboration with the library, has commissioned two artists to design a plaster wall for the main library branch.

Plastered into the wall will be old cards from the card catalogue that librarians have been invited to notate in the way librarians have done for decades.

“Many people, and I’m among them, had an emotional attachment to the card catalogue,” says Laura Lent, a reference librarian at San Francisco Public Library’s Excelsior branch. “It represented history.”