Introducing and managing end-user systems

Abstract

Information technology has developed rapidly. In 1956 Pete Luhn of IBM was the first person to use a computer to manipulate text. Just fifteen years later in 1971 the U.S. National Library of Medicine offered MEDLARS online, now known as MEDLINE. The same year 1971, Intel produced the first microprocessor. Today there are thousands of databases available online and the microprocessor or personal computer is standard equipment to be found in offices, laboratories and homes. Gone are the times when a scientist, economist or researcher worked for days in a library doing a prior art search, when the printed indexes to major abstracting services were so heavily used and worn that they had to be rebound every year, and when trying to access these printed indexes was rather like taking part in a ‘rugger’ scrum! Today online searchers mostly information scientists, documentists and librarians together with a growing number of end-users, find it is relatively easy and quick to access the scientific and business literature which has been published over the last twenty or more years and the internal databases of their organisation. These changes have taken place within the working life of many of us.