On Jun 7, 2006, at 9:35 AM, Conal Tuohy wrote:
As well as their MARC records, each library of the future will collect a growing variety of metadata about their holdings, lending histories, reviews contributed by users, clusters harvested from usage patterns, or from full-text transcriptions, etc, etc, all of which they will want to make use of in conjunction with other catalogue data.
Hear, hear! I assert that the "catalog" is not really a "catalog" (inventory list) at all, but more like a finding aid -- a tool used to identify, acquire, and use information pertinent to the information needs and expectations of a libraries primary clientele. This tool includes stuff from a traditional catalog, but it also includes stuff not necessarily owned by libraries, such as pointers to licensed materials (increasingly journal articles), the full-text of electronic books, pre-print archives, selected materials from OAI repositories, etc. -- Eric Morgan I'm hiring a Senior Programmer Analyst. See http://dewey.library.nd.edu/morgan/programmer/.
