New Online: Rethinking the catalogue
26 pages; PDF.
by Alison Dellit and Kent Fitch
Paper delivered to the Innovative Ideas Forum, National Library of Australia, 19th April 2007.

From the intro:

In this paper we propose four basic strategies based around re‐imagining library catalogues, the arterial systems of our libraries. We discuss some of the thinking that the National Library has done, and some of the steps that we are now taking. Be warned: what follows is not all ʺbuild on what weʹve gotʺ and ʺembrace and extendʺ; as with most revolutionary endeavours, plenty of creative destruction is required.

The catalogue is the arterial system of the library. We use it, we expect our users to use it, and its existence and structure is the difference between a collection and just a big accumulation of data. The goal of these strategies is to re‐equip the library catalogue to meet our aims of providing access to information ‐ from ours and others collections ‐ into the future.

1. Rethinking cataloguing: describe better and cheaper. The data that we collect about resources determines to a large extent what our users can discover through the catalogue. At the moment, resource description is time‐consuming (and hence expensive) and requires interpretation from a trained professional to understand. A rethink of cataloguing standards and
better systems can help fix this, but a shift in attitudes to resource description is also required.

2. Creating an interactive space. Knowledge is created through conversation. We need to make our online spaces as interactive as possible, facilitating engagement with our collections, better decision‐making by our patrons, and the creation of new knowledge based on our collections.

3. Unify information resources. Neither a single library nor even a large national union catalogues have enough ʺgravitational pullʺ to attract searchers. The solution is to augment the catalogue with a very large and highly dynamic set of metadata managed by a large number of separate
entities external to the library.

4. Improve access. Library systems are notoriously unfriendly, seemingly designed for the expert librarian user rather than the general public. We now know how to transform these systems and must plan for the next step: the embedding of library interfaces in external systems.

Source: National Library of Australia

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