ABSTRACT
One feature of the core courses provided new students in the Graduate School of Library Science curriculum at the University of Illinois in 1966 was a series of technical services laboratory sessions. These were designed to allow participants to experience procedures they would actually encounter on the job. During the acquisitions lab, each student was given a newly published title to search in the American Book Publishing Record and/or Cumulative Book Index and their supplements. Upon successfully completing his or her search, the student was allowed to leave… an attractive proposition, since this took place in a basement workroom of the main library on a Friday afternoon. It is amazing in retrospect that this author went into acquisitions work, since she was the very last student to complete this assignment in her section, finding the long-sought entry in the last possible issue of Publishers Weekly.
