At 09:38 AM 6/7/2006, you wrote:
"...I tend to equate our library catalog with the concept of a shelflist.
It is a great tool for finding print resources within our library (which is
not the primary activity of users). Library staff could not get along
without it. Library staff are really the primary audience for the catalog
as it exists today..."
>-Jennifer Macaulay
>Head of Library Systems
>MacPhaidin Library
>Stonehill College
>Easton, MA 02357
One of the first steps that needs to be done here is to describe accurately
what the catalog is. I disagree that the library staff is the primary
audience for the catalog. Certainly, it is a critical mechanism for
acquisitions, organizational, inventory and circulation control. But that
is only the management function of the catalog. The other raison d'etre of
the catalog, and by no means an incidental one, is as a finding aid for the
public user of the library. Yes indeed, many many information searches
today bypass the catalog in favor of the internet as a means of finding
information. That by no means detracts from the critical need for location
of print resources in physical libraries. The user cannot locate print
materials without the catalog and the organizational function that
cataloging provides. Browsing in the stacks is only possible because of
the organizational principle (classification) which the catalog
provides. And even if the mistake were to be made of turning the library
into a warehouse of books arranged by sequential acquisitions numbers, it
would still take the catalog to allow the user to determine if a given
library owns a given title.
Why don't we first realistically admit up front that an undeniable need
exists for the catalog because there will always be users looking for
physical objects in physical libraries? The world will not be a better
place if computer screen becomes the sole vehicle for information. It will
be a much sorrier place.
After we admit that the catalog fulfills a critical need that's not going
to go away, then we can get down to the business of examining and improving
the catalog. But let's not pretend that there are no users of the
catalog. There are millions of daily users in venues ranging from school
libraries, to public libraries, to academic and research libraries.
Robert L. Kusmer, Ph.D., M.L.S.
Associate Librarian
Liaison for German language & literature
Cataloger, German/Humanities/Theology
Fellow, Nanovic Institute for European Studies
123B Theodore M. Hesburgh Library
University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556-5629
U.S.A.
Phone: 574 631 8649
Fax: 574 631 6772
Email: rkusmer_at_nd.edu
Received on Thu Jun 08 2006 - 09:14:54 EDT