Today, computers are an inextricable part of our personal and professional lives. The cell phones many of us carry in our pockets have more processing power than the mainframe systems of forty years ago, and medical researchers working with high-performance systems routinely generate gigabytes or even terabytes of data. With technology changing at such a rapid pace, items from the relatively recent past are a reminder of just how much progress has been made.
Left: In 1971, Medical School Bulletin no. 179 introduced Mount Sinai staff to the Laboratory of Computer Science. Right: The first electronic catalog at the Gustave L. and Janet W. Levy Library was introduced in 1985. (Click to enlarge.)
In 1971, Mount Sinai established a Laboratory of Computer Science to offer computer services to Mount Sinai researchers. Personal desktop computers were still a decade away, so the computers referred to here would have been mainframes accessed via terminals. The Laboratory supported researchers in selecting, setting up and maintaining computer hardware for their projects. Although computers have become exponentially more powerful in the 41 years since this document was released, the customer support duties listed in this document would be familiar to a modern IT staff.
As technological change continued over the next decade and a half, many departments at Mount Sinai became increasingly digital, including the Gustave L. and Janet W. Levy Library. In 1985 the Library switched from a paper-based card catalog to an electronic catalog, the predecessor to today’s SIRSI catalog. Many features we now take for granted, such as full-text search of book titles and barcode-based checkout scanners, were revolutionary improvements at the time and (as the photograph demonstrates) came as a welcome relief to Library staff.
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