Out of the Shoebox: Publishing a Regional Periodical Index Using a Microcomputer

In the closed stack area of the Louisiana Room of Dupre Library at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, three librarians met in the early spring of 1986. This chance meeting of two public service librarians and a cataloger led to a discussion of the needs of local researchers and the difficulty of locating articles in Louisiana publications. State periodicals contain a rich variety of articles about local customs and cuisine, economic conditions, and politics. Generally, the Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature does not index these periodicals, and this often frustrates patrons who are looking for information on local topics. Many libraries, including the Dupre Library, keep vertical files of pamphlets and newspaper clippings to fill this gap. But such files are time‐consuming to maintain, their contents are too often fragmentary, and each file moreover serves only one institution.