MARC, MAchine-Readable Cataloging, is the method by which paper-and-ink card catalogs were converted to computer catalogs.

But it's still a couch potato's smorgasbord, with more than 150,000 TV and radio programs from around the world available from the museum's computer catalog with the click of a mouse.

All of these materials are listed in the computer catalog.

Around the same time, all entries related to its discovery disappeared from the computer catalog and hard-copy card files.

Mr. Hetherwick said that he had no idea how many master tapes the company's combined archives now hold, but that a computer catalog is being created.

Flipping through one of the 14 or so computer catalogs I receive daily, I see plenty of options for copying information from a computer.

So far the society has put descriptions of 70,000 of its library holdings on electronic databases, which are available at www.nyhistory.org, the society's Web site, and on the university's BobCatPlus computer catalog.

This guy in Miami has a computer catalog with a million faces in it, and you simply point to the one you want, and presto, that face is on your driver's license.

"They used any kind of catalog that would accept their numbers," he said, "And that included computer catalogs, video catalogs, music clubs, you name it."

In 1993, the computer catalog listed 8400 books and 12,315 yearly bound books of 2485 periodicals.