An evaluation of ERIC on CD‐ROM in a college library

Abstract

At the beginning of the October 1987 session OCLC set up an evaluation project at King's College Library in London, whereby the site library serving the Centre for Educational Studies would act as one of the European test sites for OCLC's Search CD450 for their Version of ERIC on CD‐ROM. The paper describes the provision of equipment, software, accompanying literature and assessment questionnaire, as well as the main characteristics of the system and the search facilities. The implications for the library of staff training and a heavy additional programme of user education are also discussed. User reaction was extremely favourable, and many more readers made use of the facility than had requested online searches, whereas it had previously been unusual for any one reader to have more than two online searches per year.