Future of cataloging: act globally, think locally

Just thinking out loud:

Lots of furious conversations on the future of cataloging happened this week on the AUTOCAT list. I read through these conversations last night. They were sparked by Thomas Mann's response to the LC working group report, On the Record.

There use to be a slogan, "Think globally, act locally." I think we need to turn this slogan around. The cataloging community needs to "act globally, think locally." We need shared, free bibliographic data on the Web and we need to move away from repetitive local silos (thanks, Karen).

But also on the Internet everyone has a niche (market). And guess what, on the Web libraries need a niche too. It's no surprise that special, unique collections are now the focus of many digital libraries. It's what's unique in our collections that will draw readers/users/ patrons to us on the Web.

The future of cataloging is intrinsically tied to the future of libraries. And the future of libraries is what we can offer to readers that is added value beyond the full-text resources that will continue to proliferate the Web.

Comments

[Tom Kaun]

I'm just a teacher librarian at high school but I couldn't agree more with your last statement. "The future of cataloging is intrinsically tied to the future of libraries. And the future of libraries is what we can offer to readers that is added value beyond the full-text resources that will continue to proliferate the Web."
What I'm wondering, as I continually add content from the Web to my catalog is why someone isn't making more MARC records of websites available. There is still a disconnect between the catalog and the Internet in terms of the actual cataloging of websites. Is it because they are considered ephemeral? Or what? I have found a few random academic libraries which seem to catalog sites but I've noticed that LC doesn't even catalog government documents/websites which any sense of purpose.