Twenty papers were selected from the Technical Program of the First Mid-Year Regional Conference of the American Society for Information Science, held at the University of Dayton, Dayton, Ohio in May 1972. The papers cover a range of subjects related to the general theme of cost reduction in libraries and information centers. Following an…

The 15-year history of the development of library automation is traced, and four major obstacles which had to be overcome are identified: the lack of funds for development, programing, and testing; the need for a common data base; the need for cooperative arrangements among institutions; and the need for widely-available on-line processing. Seven…