I have mentioned my dreams about libraries on Twitter, but I think this one will need more than 280 characters. Last night I dreamed about doing a Dialog search in the library for a patron. When I started at Schering in 1979 (hello @Bourbonthecat) we searched Dialog all the time to find chemical, pharmacological, and biological information This was before the internet existed, so we had to connect to this online service via a phone modem as seen above. The modem speeds were very slow. I did search Dialog at NJIT until the late 1990s. I remember the commands:
- Select
- Super Select
- Combine using the Boolean operators and or not
- Type
- Print
Back then all research was done by librarians with the results presented to the staff scientists.
Obviously, changes in technology over the decades have impacted the way we find information.
Dialog still exists, but it was absorbed by Proquest. There is a brief article in Wikipedia about Proquest
Dialog.
