I was a bit overexcited when I opened the September 1944 issue of the ALA Bulletin and found an article on Montclair (N.J.) Public Library's use of International Business Machines to analyze library usage statistics. In my head, IBM equals computers, and computers equal cool. (This is despite knowing the former statement to be untrue. I'll stand by the latter.)

In any event, the inspiringly-titled "Business Machine—Tool of Library Progress" (Sep. 1944, p. 291-294) wasn't about a computer by the modern (electronic and programmable) definition; IBM didn't introduce its first model until that year, although a few other machines had been built by then. While there's no explicit model or even machine type listed, it looks like Montclair was using a punchcard-based tabulating machine. (Author Felix E. Hirsch referred to the "Ten minutes of sorting time, which is sufficient for a considerable run of cards" needed to find the answer to a demographic question.)

Despite starring only a computer precursor, the article seems to have the energy and excitement of the herald of a new, computerized, era. No doubt they'll arrive on the scene shortly, right?

Well... not quite. There were, perhaps, a few nods in that direction in the coming years: an address at the 1946 Annual Conference reprinted in the September issue of that year (p. 261) by Tennessee Valley Authority Director David Lilienthal asked the now-age-old question "Is the machine good, or is it evil?", while a September 1956 article by Frank Anderson of East Chicago Public Library mused on what libraries would be like in 2006. (Among his predictions: Carnegie libraries would be razed to make space for heliports; physical books will all be filmed and then shredded and sold for waste paper, which would be used in boxes to pack nuclear device components; and an automated "electronic book plucker" that could search circulation records kept on IBM punchcards.)

I'd say the computer age didn't really reach the Bulletin until the March 1959 issue, in which ALA Associate Executive Director Richard B. Harwell announced the Library Technology Project, a grant-funded program at ALA with a full-time staff of five. Even that's not quite accurate: While the Project soon turned its attention to the use of computers in libraries, its initial charge was to develop standards for library supplies, to contribute to the development of new or redesigned library equipment (including an inexpensive microfilm reader, scuff-free paperclips, and a permanent ink), and to maintain a clearinghouse of information on library technology.

Even if the Library Technology Project wasn't instantly focused on computer technology, others were. In October 1961, Jesse H. Shera (former bigwig in the Junior Members Round Table and then dean of the School of Library Science at Western Reserve University) published "Automation Without Fear." (p. 787-794) This article identifies three sources of fear of computers: psychological, technological, and economic; it describes potential uses of computers in reference work—the examples, while specific, appear to be hypothetical rather than based on actual uses at the time; and it ruminated on the question of whether or not computers can "think." (It also represents what I believe to be the first time the Bulletin used the word "computer" to refer to the machines so familiar to us today.)

The Library Technology Project joined the computer game by 1963. The project's director, Frazer Poole, reported on the four-day Conference on Libraries and Automation in the July-August issue of that year (p. 658-659).

About 100 people attended the conference, a meeting of two worlds: librarians and computer experts. Despite high-level support—Librarian of Congress L. Quincy Mumford opened the first session—the conference was rough going. "It was obvious to even the casual observer that the computer experts and the librarians were not always talking the same language," Poole wrote. He noted the skepticism held by many of the attending librarians that computers could improve processes at all, and observed a basic failure to communicate. "In too many instances, librarians were saying, in effect: Tell us what your machines can do and we will tell you whether we can use them. The machine men, on the other hand, stated again and again their basic tenet: Tell us your requirements and we will tell you what machines can do to help libraries."

But the Library Technology Project did, finally, lead to concrete computer applications, reported in 1964 and 1965 in a series of seven articles by engineer-librarian Joseph Becker. He covered: MEDLARS, the Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System at the National Library of Medicine; the University of California at San Diego's experiments with using computers to maintain serial holdings records for 1,500 titles (with 3,500 more promised); Los Angeles County Public Library's use of computers to automatically generate a printed catalog of its 223,000 titles; a remote-retrieval system demonstrated at the New York World's Fair; the IBM Research Library's computer-based circulation record updating and maintenance; Pennsylvania State University Library's systems analysis project; and a case study of Florida Atlantic University, which was established in 1964 and whose library was the first in the United States to use computer-based data processing from its founding.

Sure, the programs aren't sophisticated by today's standards; it would be absurd to expect them to be. (If we accept Moore's law as an estimate, computing power has doubled 28 times since then, so we've got about 268 million times more juice to work with.) MEDLARS, for example, required a typist to prepare catalog entries on a special typewriter, which converted letters to punched holes on a paper tape, which could be spliced together, and run through a machine to transfer that information to magnetic tape. That tape was read by a computer, which could: Compare subject headings with a master list to detect errors; generate full citations and create cross-references; sort citations alphabetically; and "look for logical errors in the citations themselves and print out exactly where they occur," although the article doesn't specify how.

Still, it's a start. Welcome, computer era.