Oral history interview with Charles Payne, 1990.

Biographical Note

Librarian.

Scope and Contents

Graduate Library School of the University of Chicago, 1960; position with Industrial Relations Center Library at University of Chicago; involvement with early library automation: full systems analysis of University of Chicago Library; grant from National Science Foundation to develop Bibliographic Data Processing System, 1965; development of "Chicago Format:"independent, bibliographic, single database system; influence on Machine Readable Catalogue System [MARC] Pilot Project, related systems; cost of maintaining MARC system: financial, internal dependence, continued lack of authority and serials control systems; early library data programming and printing: development of specialized equipment; meetings with International Business Machines [IBM], Library of Congress, funding agencies, librarians; controversy surrounding complexity, resource consumption of automation programs, "New York Mafia" at Columbia University, New York Public Library; conflicts surrounding role as early chairman of Machine Readable Bibliographic Information [MARBI]; failure of Collaborative Systems Development Project [CLSP]; failure to pursue national retrospective conversion program for unconverted national database; recollections of various members of library automation programs.

Subjects

• Cooperative cataloging.
• Fall, James E., interviewer.--http://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/relators/ivr
• Information storage and retrieval systems.
• International Business Machines Corporation.
• Interviews.
• Librarians--Interviews.
• Libraries--Automation.
• Library of Congress.
• MARC formats.
• Machine-readable bibliographic data.
• Oral histories.
• Payne, Charles--Interviews.
• University of Chicago.

Access Conditions

Copyright by The Library of Congress, 1991.