It's not just possible but already a fact.
492 libraries working together, creating the world largest journal catalog
http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/
"It comprises 42524 titles from all areas of research, 5299 of which are
available online only. There are 20706 journals which are accessible free
of charge to anyone. In addition, the participating libraries provide
access
to the journals they subscribe to for their users."
http://rzblx1.uni-regensburg.de/ezeit/hilfe.phtml?bibid=AAAAA&colors=7&lang=en
Jan
William Denton wrote:
> On 13 February 2009, Jonathan Rochkind wrote:
>
>> It's possible to have a conceptual One Big Database, while still
>> having individual actual catalogs that contain a subset of the
>> records from that One Big Database.
>>
>> Our individual catalogs should be automatically, without user
>> intervention, sending and getting changes to records out to 'the
>> cloud'. We can still have our own library catalog, but the records in
>> it are conceptually just one subset of a shared cooperative corpus.
>
> Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
>
>> The big, centralized library will not be able to tailor its holdings
>> and services to its local users.
>
> I entirely agree, and I'd put it as I think I've put it here before:
> We should help people build, manage, and share their personal branches
> of the One Big Library. That's the future of useful, well-managed
> cataloguing. I gave a talk about this a couple of weeks ago (getting
> into pattern languages, too) with Stacy Allison-Cassin and the slides
> and audio are here:
>
> http://hdl.handle.net/10315/2501
>
> Pardon the self-promotion. We explain our idea of the One Big Library
> (hello, dchud!), and Stacy talks about a metadata commons that would
> help it.
>
> I was talking about some of this cataloguing stuff with Jodi
> Schneider. Today we were wondering how much of the cataloguing
> problems that can't be solved by machines could be broken down to
> simple tasks and handed over to the Mechanical Turk.
>
> I'm starting to think an Internet-scale open bibliographic metadata
> commons (with complete FRBRization) is coming soon, and if we're not
> the ones who make it, the rest of the Semantic Web people will make it
> for us with the parts we've made available so far, and lots of
> librarians will sit in their basement cubicles wondering why no-one
> else listens when they tell each other how important their work is.
>
> Bill
--
De åsikter som framförs här är mina personliga
och inte ett uttryck för Göteborgs universitets-
biblioteks hållning
Opinions expressed here are my own and not
those of the Gothenburg University Library
Jan Szczepanski
Förste bibliotekarie
Goteborgs universitetsbibliotek
Box 222
SE 405 30 Goteborg, SWEDEN
Tel: +46 31 7861164 Fax: +46 31 163797
E-mail: Jan.Szczepanski_at_ub.gu.se
Received on Mon Feb 16 2009 - 02:28:41 EST