Re: Ceci n'est pas un catalogue

My copy of Merriam-Webster also includes Kleenex and Xerox.  Both are listed
as trademarks, and both are spelled with a capital letter, in spite of the
fact that in common conversation the words are used generically more often
than they are used to refer to a specific brand.  I think the same is nearly
true for Google.

Irene Patrick

-----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of B.G. Sloan
Sent: Tuesday, August 21, 2007 12:47 PM
To: NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu
Subject: Re: [NGC4LIB] Ceci n'est pas un catalogue

Janet Hill said:

  "I think we are well along the path to when "google" as a verb will be
nearly universally used to mean nothing more than looking something up on
the Internet."

  "Google" is already in dictionaries (e.g., OED, Merriam-Webster) but they
are careful to define it as using the Google search engine to look for info.

  Bernie Sloan

Janet Hill <Janet.Hill_at_Colorado.EDU> wrote:
  -----Original Message-----
From: Next generation catalogs for libraries
[mailto:NGC4LIB_at_listserv.nd.edu] On Behalf Of Bernhard Eversberg

So do I take it your suggestion is we replace "Catalog(ue)" or "Katalog"
or "Search" etc. on our homepages with "Googling"?

-------
Errr, no. In fact, I think that "Catalog" works just fine, just as I believe
that "library" is still a splendid term. Language moves, evolves, and slips
around. The etymological derivation of a word doesn't matter so much as what
we have in our minds conceptually. Libraries have long since included things
(or even been entirely made up of things) other than books, and we don't
seem to mind that "libros" meant/means "books". Similarly, the concept of a
catalog as a place/mechanism for finding out about information resources and
works of imagination/creativity works fine, even though its scope has
expanded from katalogos = list or "write down".

I have always hated the term OPAC, coined, I believe, by Charles Hildreth in
the early 80s in a report on several very early online catalogs. I wondered
what the point was. Yes, it was "online", but why include "public access"
in the name ...... Weren't all of our catalogs "public access"? (well, I
will grant you that if you maintained an official card catalog, then THAT
wasn't "public access"). When you had BOTH a card catalog and an online
catalog, and especially if their coverage was different, there was some
purpose in modifying the word "catalog" with either "card" or "online," but
once a library had only one catalog and it was online, there was little use
in keeping ANY modifier.

Frankly, I think that libraries detracted from the seamlessness of the
evolution from card-based catalogs to what we have today by giving the
catalogs individual localized names. We never named our card catalogs.
(Why we thought it was necessary to name our online catalogs is a mystery to
me. And some of the names were so cutesy, arch, or strained). I was at
Northwestern at the point that it started to sell the NOTIS system to other
libraries (in about 1981?). WE called our online catalog "the catalog"
(just as we had called our card catalog "the catalog"), and I remember being
bemused when other libraries started giving their catalogs names.

BUT, moving back to "google" as a generic ..... Kleenex and Thermos and
Aspirin were so successful that they became kleenex, thermos, and aspirin.
I think we are well along the path to when "google" as a verb will be nearly
universally used to mean nothing more than looking something up on the
Internet. And no doubt the corporate entity that is Google will be partly
pleased, and partly annoyed.

janet

Janet Swan Hill, Professor
Associate Director for Technical Services University of Colorado Libraries,
CB184 Boulder, CO 80309 janet.hill_at_colorado.edu
*****
"The thing about democracy, beloveds is that it is not neat, orderly, or
quiet. It requires a certain relish for confusion." Molly Ivins



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