Eric,
I hope this is not the Next Generation catalog. For one thing, it would
do you no good if you needed to read something that doesn't have an
ISBN. Believe it or not, people do sometimes need to read things that
predate the ISBN. Especially in certain fields of inquiry.
I suppose you could say this exemplifies simplicity. There's only one
thing someone needs to know: the ISBN for something. The system will
take care of the rest. But ISBN's have no relation to the subject
content or even, as far as I know, the author. So this proposal would
make your local library no more than a cheaper alternative to Amazon.com
or Barnes and Nobles. After you find something you like in those places,
if you can't pay for it, you see if your library has it for free. It
will be real sad if that's the future of libraries.
--Ted Gemberling
PS I did just try the "find similar items" feature. And that does enable
you to find things with similar subjects. But don't you think now and
then someone might want to see what those subjects are? Because if you
know what they are, you have a possibility of determining how they
relate to others.
Not an official statement of the UAB Lister Hill Library
-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU] On Behalf Of Eric Lease Morgan
Sent: Friday, May 11, 2007 1:49 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_LISTSERV.ND.EDU
Subject: [NGC4LIB] send it to me
I think the "next generation" library catalog is not really a
"catalog" at all, but more like a tool or a foundation for providing
various types of services, and as an example I wrote a program I call
Send It To Me:
http://mylibrary.library.nd.edu/send/
Given an ISBN number the program will try to find the item in our
local catalog and prompt the user for their University ID if it is
found. The system would then update a local database and get somebody
to actually send the item to the user. "Send it to me!"
If the item is not found, then it uses xisbn and thingisbn to
generate similar ISBN numbers and search for those locally. Again, if
found, it prompts the user for their ID and sets up a delivery
mechanism.
If all is lost, then the system locates the item in the Library of
Congress, and offers the user four choices: 1) ILL, 2) library
purchase, 3) user purchase, 4) find similar items and borrow them
instead.
The whole thing is just a prototype; it demonstrates how libraries
could make things easier for students, instructors, and researchers
when it comes to acquiring known items from library catalogs.
--
Eric Lease Morgan
University Libraries of Notre Dame
Received on Fri May 11 2007 - 14:35:14 EDT