Bay Area Reference Center

The Bay Area Reference Center (BARC) was a reference service serving nine Northern California public library systems and headquartered at the San Francisco Public Library. It was established as an experiment in 1967 by the California State Library and closed down in 1988, when the funding from the US Federal Government that it relied on was ended. It pioneered the use of networking technologies such as teletype and fax machines in providing reference services to patrons at far-flung, sometimes rural libraries. Its magazine, Synergy, won two ALA awards.