How the Personal Computer Changed My Life

In 1975, when I first became a medical librarian, all medical literature searches were done manually. This meant that the researcher went to a print index of medical or scientific literature and looked up the relevant information, writing out the bibliography. Index Medicus was the preferred index, but we sometimes used Science Citations Index. The National Library of Medicine was just introducing an online system called Medline. It had been in trial on a limited basis, and was just being offered to universities with medical schools. The tapes used to produce Index Medicus were put into NLM’s mainframe computer, and academic librarians were learning how to search the database from remote locations with terminals attached to telephone lines. These “dumb terminals” were merely keyboards, with no memory. The computer was in Bethesda, MD.

At library meetings, everyone was talking about this wonderful new technology. Hospital librarians hungered for a chance to try it. We all wanted to learn. Terminals cost several thousand dollars. Mainframe capacity was too limited to allow more users. Finally, more users could be accommodated. The hospital librarians in Seattle got together and shared a single code. They divided up the day, and each hospital had a designated hour in which to search. You paid by the minute for your online time, and prime time hours were twice as costly as non-prime. Prime time was 10am to 2pm EST.

Those of us in the outlying areas were left out. Telecommunication nodes with local telephone numbers were unavailable in areas with a population of less than one hundred thousand. Long distance charges added to online charges made the cost prohibitive. Finally, Whatcom County’s population reached the magic number. I begged for a terminal, and online training. The terminals now were a little lower in cost. We bought one that cost $1800, and I carried it back and forth between the two hospitals. I went off to UCLA for a week to learn how to become an online searcher.

You cannot imagine how this changed my life. We no longer needed to purchase the costly and space consuming print indexes. The computer magically put together our search terms, and found only the most relevant articles. They were printed out for us on paper. Okay, so it was a continuous strip of thermal paper, and the printing faded over time. It was still a miracle. Everyone said that with a computer terminal, a librarian could do three times as much work. I believe it was true. Of course, there were limitations. The database was only a few years deep at first, only indexing material back to 1974. Not all journals were included in the beginning. Costs could still be high. The United States government subsidized Medline, but some private indexes cost several hundred dollars an hour to search. You were always aware of the minutes ticking away.

The first personal computers were marketed in 1975, but few people owned them until quite a bit later. Hospitals are notoriously tight with money. I requested a PC in every budget from the early 1980’s until I left Bellingham in 1988, but my request was always denied. I kept searching on my terminal. I was able to have email, and it was a wonderful tool for librarians. We were able to request materials on interlibrary loan with email, saving at least two days time in the mail. Articles had to come back by mail, but the request got there in minutes. We all agreed to read our email several times each day. Then NLM introduced Docline, an automated ILL system. I could also access this system with my terminal, and it was even more efficient. If the first library could not fill your request, it was automatically sent on to another library that owned the material. You didn't even have to look up which library held the journal, as the system had all that information imbedded in the program. More and more magic for librarians. I stopped buying interlibrary loan forms.

I got my first PC when I went to work for Evergreen Hospital in 1988. There was never any question about it. The medical staff told the hospital that I couldn’t possibly do the job without a computer, and one was waiting for me when I started to work. What heaven! I could now do things I had never even dreamed of doing. Our journal holdings could be stored in the computer, and systems were available for ordering and checking in and out. I could keep the libraries statistics on a spreadsheet, and write my reports on a word processing system. Everything was so much easier. I had finally caught up with the rest of the library world.

At library meetings we started hearing about the Internet. They had it at the University of Washington. Other academic libraries started to get access. It was expensive. An institutional Internet account cost several thousand dollars. It all sounded so complicated. You had to know a special computer language to give the commands. I began to think it would be better if I could retire, so I didn’t have to fight this particular battle, but as usual, the technology came on too fast.

In 1994, I was elected Chair-Elect of the Pacific Northwest Chapter of the Medical Library Association. The Board wanted to keep in touch by Internet. I was the only board member without access. All of a sudden, it became vitally important for me to have this tool. As soon as I got home, I began to investigate possible methods. The Regional Library had put together a list of providers. Most of them wanted to hook up the entire institution, but in Bellevue, I was able to find a new business that would provide individual access at a cost of $300.00 a year, as a group rate. I called to ask for a definition of a group. They told me that they would consider the Seattle Area Hospital Library Consortium a group, if I could get ten members to sign up with them. We would have to pay annually. The company was Northwest Nexus, and their Internet service was halcyon.com.

At the next meeting of the consortium, I suggested that we sign up as a group. Those hospitals that actually had Internet service were paying between $6,000 and twenty thousand dollars a year and this sounded like a real deal. We agreed to join as a group. The owner himself came to my office to show me how to sign up and use the service. His wife came with him. She had been a nurse lactation specialist at Evergreen, and was excited that we were going to be a customer. I learned to love the Internet. I also became the area specialist in the Internet. Other librarians called me every day or so to ask questions. Nobody knew very much. We were all learning together.

As always, technology improved, and the Internet became a windows-based program. My old computer no longer had the memory to do the job. Another budget request was made. The old computer was ten years old, after all, and my friends on the medical staff went to bat for me. This time, I got my new computer without a hassle.

With the Internet, library programs started coming by leaps and bounds. Medical Librarians formed a listserve, where we could ask each other for help. All of a sudden, problems became much easier to solve. Post a question to the list, and you almost always found someone who could give you the answer, or at least point you in the right direction. Sometimes, I would go online to ask a question of the list, only to find the question had already been asked, and the answer was there.

We got an Internet Medline in PubMed. Now online searching became free. In 2000, Docline also became Internet based. Who knows what the future will bring?

I bought my first PC when I retired in 1999. I don’t know how I ever lived without one. I do almost all my public library business online, as well as my banking. I do a fair amount of shopping online, as well, and now I have discovered ebay. I can remember going to the Seattle World’s Fair, and seeing the House of Tomorrow. They told us that by the year 2000, every household would have its own computer, and that it would cost about as much as the family car. Well. Cars were a lot cheaper then.