An experiment testing utility of truncated search keys as inquiry terms in an on-line system was performed on a file of 16,792 title-only bibliographic entries. Use of a 3,3 key yields eight or fewer entries 99.0% of the time.A previous paper ( 1) established that truncated derived search keys are efficient in retrieval of entries from a name-title catalog. This paper reports a similar investigation into the retrieval efficiency of truncated keys for extracting entries from an on-line, title-only catalog; it is assumed that entries retrieved would be displayed on an interactive terminal.Earlier work by Ruecking (2), Nugent (3), Kilgour (4), Dolby (5), Coe ( 6), and Newman and Buchinski ( 7) were investigations of search keys designed to retrieve bibliographic entries from magnetic tape files. The earlier paper in this series and the present paper investigate retrieval from on-line files in an interactive environment. Similarly, the work of Rothrock ( 8) inquired into the efficacy of derived truncated search keys for retrieving telephone directory entries from an on-line file.Since the appearance of the previous paper, the Ohio State University Libraries have developed and activated a remote catalog access and circulation control system employing a truncated derived search key similar to those described in the earlier paper. However, OSU adopted a 4,5 key consisting of the first four characters of the main entry and the first five characters of the title excluding initial articles and a few other nonsignificant words. Whereas the OSU system treats the name and title as a continuous string of characters, the experiments reported in this and the previous paper deal only with the first word in the name and title, articles always being excluded.

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<p class="p1">This investigation shows that search keys derived from personal a<span class="s1">u</span>thor names possess a sufficient degree of distinctness to be employed in an <span class="s2">effi</span>cient computerized interactive index to a <span class="s3">file </span>of MARC II catalog record<span class="s1">s </span>having 167,745 personal author entries.</p>

<p><span>The history of library computerization from its initiation in 1954 to 1970 is described. Approximately the </span><span>first </span><span>half of the period was devoted to computerization of user-oriented subject infotmation retrieval and the second half to library-oriented procedures. At the end of the period on-line systems were being designed and activated.</span></p>