Member Opinions: Tom Lewandowski (Oakland Community College)

[June 3, 2003]
This week's Member Opinion comes from Tom Lewandowski at Oakland Community College (OCC), and what a wonderful thing that it did. After 30+ years of working in the OCC library system, Tom is retiring on June 25th. We are happy that he agreed to participate and wish him a peaceful retirement. Here are Tom's answers to our three questions...

What has DALNET done for you?
Oakland Community College came to DALNET from a 24 year association with Brodart. OCC libraries began their existence in 1965 with a machine readable database provided by Alanar, a division of Brodart. Alanar provided a punched-card list of holdings from California community colleges that was used to generate a master computer tape. We owned the tape and could claim it at anytime. Alanar provided the list and also acted as a jobber for selections from that list. Brodart provided us with a book catalog and quarterly supplements. Ultimately, we moved to a COM (Computer-Output Microfilm) catalog that depended on a very crude rear-screen microfilm reader with equally crude calibration for searching an author/title/subject index.

In 1985 Brodart began offering an OPAC but it became apparent that other modules and their release dates were in question. It was at this time that OCC had a new administration that supported the libraries' move to greater automation and integration with the local academic/research library community. DALNET was offering both of these in several modules from a highly reliable system called NOTIS.

So after considerable study the OCC Board of Trustees committed us to DALNET in 1989. This gave us a reliable ILS in NOTIS and an ILS with technical support at the DALNET Center we could not replicate on our own without considerable expense. We had arrived. Our IT people had to be elated that they didn't really have to serve us, directly and we were glad to have IT people at WSU who were library-oriented and/or librarians who were IT-oriented. Again, we had arrived after 24 years of pioneering on our own. We had reliable and responsive technical support, hardware and software.

What more could you ask for?

What's the best part of participating in DALNET?
Speaking from a historical perspective, DALNET provided us with a highly reliable system and a similar staff to support that system. DALNET also provided OCC with access to the catalogs and collections of some of our library neighbors prior to the Web.

What else would you like DALNET to do for you in the future?
Select a system with the quality and reliability of NOTIS, at a reasonable price and with continued excellent technical support. I'd also like to see DALNET as a key player in the digitization of local history.

I'm retiring at the end of June. So I'd like to tip my hat to Mary Ann Sheble, Director of Library Systems at OCC, and Judy Murray (Retired), their staff and all the people who have made DALNET what it is and what it has been over these past 14 years for the students and staff at Oakland Community College.

If you would like to submit your opinion to the DALNET News, please contact Steven Bowers of the DALNET Staff.

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