Rare book survey

Janet, I have a series of programs I developed here at the State Library
of New South Wales for surveying. They utilise dBase IV and have the
following features. A file of random numbers (from a random number
table); a program that holds location specific data such as a) available
range numbers, bay numbers, shelf numbers and shelf widths, b)
non-existent ranges, bays, shelves etc and then chooses locations to
survey; a database that holds the chosen locations; a program that
prints out survey sheets in floor, range, bay, shelve, location order.

This set of files and programs was written for one library but we have,
fairly easily (ie you have to mess with the dBase programming language),
adapted it to three separate locations and one off-site library that had
a very different layout.

This is a warning that although the programs are annotated they are not
exactly user friendly if you don't know about dBase and are prepared to
accept my way of programming.

The principles were based on the article by Buchanan and Coleman (1979)
`Deterioration survey of the Stanford University Libraries Green Library
stack collection' and reproduced in Darling and Boomgarden, Preservation
Planning Program Resource Notebook, OMS: Washington, DC, (1987). We paid
particular attention to the article by Drott, quoted by Buchanan and
Coleman on how to a) choose a sample size and b) choose random locations
that are statistically acceptable.

If you have access to a pc I could mail you a 5 1/4" floppy with the
programs and sample random numbers.

Alan G Howell
Preservation Manager
State Library of NSW, Macquarie St, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia
Tel: (02) 230-1679; Fax: (02) 232-4816;

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                  Conservation DistList Instance 5:46
                  Distributed: Tuesday, March 31, 1992
                        Message Id: cdl-5-46-001
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