Karen Coyle has turned some of my questions around into more aggressive
formulations.
Given the scope and aim of this forum, I can share her views. Readers of
this list may, however, tend to opposite points of view and find
different versions of a question more appropriate or realistic.
Here, I'm just adding one more question:
11. What about the content of the NGC and its granularity?
While a duplication of efforts is questionable (say, if we want
periodical articles in OPACs), catalogs do already contain selected
digital matter although these are also findable in search engines,
so they are increasingly reaching out to include what may be useful
for the audience in the context of the physical collection.
Even with regard to the physical collection, however, more
granularity may be useful in many cases: thinking of multiparts,
abandon the 505 contents note in favor of analytics. For if we want
ToCs, what use is a brief list of volumes in a 505. Take FRBR's
concept of part/whole relationships seriously.
OTOH, impending global digitization, if it comes, would render local
catalogs anachronistic. If it comes, local collections become difficult
to perceive as such, so there will be acceptance for one global NGC
only - after all, there is only one Google. Or will and should the
former seemlessly merge into the latter?
More seriously, I do think that the two largest reservoirs of recorded
knowledge, the internet and physical libraries, complement each other.
The finding aids, Google and NGCs, therefore also have to be viewed
as complements with little redundancy. We are seeing the beginnings, and
even if the one and only NGC is not round the corner, local
functionality may well be tied in much more closely with Google Books,
and G.B. can gain a lot from existing catalog metadata.
B.Eversberg
Received on Tue Sep 04 2007 - 08:01:44 EDT