Online Numeric Data-Base Systems: A Resource for the Traditional Library.
Margaret O. Adams · Illinois Digital Environment for Access to Learning and Scholarship (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) · 1982
REFERENCE SERVICE IS the ultimate library service since its object is to insure the meeting of the library patron with the materials or knowledge which the library is established to afford him...."' With reference service as the ultimate library service, I propose that the ideal reference department in the latter decades of the twentieth century should coordinate a full range of computer-based services: online library networking, online bibliographic and textual searching and retrieval services, data library services, as described elsewhere in this issue, and utilization of online numeric data-base systems.This model for reference reflects a continuum in the evolution of information services during the past century.Its foundation is a conviction that libraries are better suited, by tradition and structure, to exploit selectively the full gamut of the emerging computer-based information resources than are individuals.The following discussion analyzes one component of this reference service: online numeric data-base systems for time-series data.For purposes of definition, a numeric data base is described as a "computerreadable collection of data which are predominantly numeric in nature," with numeric data-base systems comprising "a functioning combination of one or more numeric databases ...[with] a search system which can retrieve the numeric data ...and further process them."'As used here, online numeric data-base systems refer to systems where the content of the data base is composed of discrete items of historic statistical information.Potentially the discussion could easily apply to data bases of statistical projections or forecasted data.A further limitation is