The Columbia Library System, one of the products sold and supported by the Macmillan/McGraw-Hill Educational Technology Company, has been shipping a full-MARC version to new customers for the last few months. It has now announced a new release to all customers that will allow them to install full-MARC over their existing version without requiring a database conversion. A library will be able to continue to operate without MARC records or it can switch to full-MARC mode. A switch will require exporting all of the bibliographic records, upgrading them to full-MARC, and reloading them.
The Columbia Library System move is part of a general migration to full-MARC by vendors of library automation software designed to operate in a DOS environment.
(The Columbia Library System is among the twenty nine microcomputer-based library systems evaluated by Matthews and Parker in the March/April and May/June 1993 issues of Library Technology Reports.)
[Contact: Columbia Library System, c/o CTB Macmillan/McGraw-Hill Educational Technology Company, 20 Ryan Ranch, Monterey, CA 93940-9703; (800) 538-9547 or (408) 649-7731; Fax (408) 393-7462.]
