The Local Systems Committee of the Online Bibliographic Services Special Interest Section of the American Association of Law Libraries met on July 21, 1996 at 7 a.m. 15 people attended the meeting led by Chairperson, Georgia Briscoe. The library attendees introduced themselves and told of the latest major change to their local systems. INNOPAC was the system represented by the highest number of librarians (nine) with NOTIS and DYNIX used by two libraries, BEST SELLER by one and one librarian had no system, but was shopping for one.

» Topics for Technical Services Law Librarian: Several good suggestions were made for possible submissions to the Newsletter from our Committee. Georgia Briscoe will write a summary of the meeting for the next issue and also write an announcement that electronic serial claiming is now possible on INNOPAC with Rothman and Hein. Mary Chapman, NYU, will write a summary of her experience using a Yankee book Peddler software product for electronic ordering (known as GOBI) in conjunction with her local system. We will ask Terry Ballard (NYU) to allow us to print his list of common misspellings found in local systems. Sally Wambold (Richmond), Georgia Bryant, and possibly Virginia Bryant(George Washington) will compile a checklist for batch loading of MARC records into local systems for publishing in the Newsletter. Allan Keely (Wake Forest) may have time to write a piece on DYNIX's system administrator certification program and Susan Chinoransky (George Washington) may write a piece on her upcoming experience with "table of contents" use in local systems.

» Education Program suggestions: Connecting local systems to vendors, bibliographic utilities, and LANs were discussed. Several librarians gave examples of interfaces they had established between their local system and OCLC, Peter Ward, Rothman, Hein, Blackwell, Uncover, and Yankee Book Peddler. A program proposal form will be submitted by Georgia Briscoe on this subject. Pat Callaghan (Pennsylvania), Mary Chapman, and Georgia will participate. A second possible program for the Anaheim meeting could cover the intricacies involved in connecting a CD-ROM LAN to a local system: security, technology, licensing, hotlinks, etc.

» Discussion items: Several other items were covered, including the benefits and problems of each of the three platforms available for most local systems -- character based, windows based, and Web based. Two libraries represented at the meeting had their PACs on the Web for use at limited workstations or by off-site users only. Several libraries were considering putting their PACs on the Web.

Jack Bisset of Washington & Lee Law Library summarized his experience as a beta test site for release 10 of the inventory control module of INNOPAC.

The order of options on local systems was of interest to many librarians. No one was aware of research on this topic, but everyone agreed that the order could definitely affect patron searching.

The locations of PACs in the library was questioned. Most libraries spread them throughout their buildings, but concentrated several in the reference area.