Good morning,
I'm delighted to announce the release of the Oral History of LIAS project<https://liashistory.com/interviews>. In 1974, Penn State Libraries bought its first computer and began brainstorming a Library Information Access System (LIAS). In 1979, the team released its first library circulation module. By the mid 80s, patrons could search its catalog from a terminal at University Park or the rare home PC. Work and deployments continued until it was in use across Penn State campuses around the Commonwealth for most library functions until we migrated to Sirsi around 1999/2000.
The oral history is made up of interviews with 14 people who worked at the Libraries in that era. In addition to technical team members and library leadership, I talked to catalogers, a library manager from one of our largest campus libraries, and asked a music librarian about the indexing project she initiated to make musical recordings properly discoverable. The stories capture library history, history of technology, and the many challenges of balancing our many internal needs and overcoming technical limitations (we started by using what I calculated to be 2-3MB of computing power!).
There are a variety of ways to access the oral histories. Each interview page includes a Kaltura embed with the audio and a full transcript. You can turn on subtitles in Kaltura or download a PDF from the Kaltura embed module. Because it's entirely audio content, I also published a podcast-compatible feed which means you can listen on a podcast app. It can be found through searching most major podcast apps, but there's also a page with some links/info<https://liashistory.com/podcast/>. The podcast format doesn't contain anything additional, it's just an easier way to listen on the go.
Ruth
Ruth Kitchin Tillman
Systems Librarian (Associate Librarian)
Penn State University Libraries
Paterno Library 006
rkt6_at_psu.edu<mailto:rkt6_at_psu.edu>
she/her/hers
Received on Mon Jul 20 2026 - 10:43:02 EDT