This paper provides a historical account of Ralph Halsted Parker and his work to automate libraries in the early to middle parts of the twentieth century. One of Parker's motivations to automate stemmed from a desire to professionalize academic librarianship, and this is evident in his administration as library director at the University of…

Renovating, expanding or building new libraries today is a challenge on several levels. Libraries in general are faced with image issues, such as the assumption that a library building exists only to house print material followed by the equally erroneous assumption that everything is now available online, thus rendering a physical building…