I think a “kewl” (as well as cool) idea is the creation of mini-catalogs.

Our libraries have large collection. That’s nice. But often the student/scholar only wants to look at a smaller subset of the collection. For example, they might want to look at only the books about painting. Alternatively, they might want to only look at items in a particular sub collection — a “special” collection. Unfortunately, and to the best of my knowledge, our library catalogs are not really amenable to such things. 

In order to facilitate greater use & understanding of these sub collections, I think it would be fun to:

  1. dump all the MARC records describing a sub collection

  2. generate a set of text files intended for printing, 
     and these text files would manifest a VERY traditional 
     library catalog [1]

  3. generate a computer-searchable index designed to be
     used by a hand-held device [2]

  4. promote the use & availability of the outputs of
     Steps #2 & #3

What’s kewl is that the text files can be given away, printed, and even (“Gasp!”) written in. They require zero technology, and can last a long, long time. Heck, they are even portable and copies can be placed at the head of the collection(s). In days of old, librarians paid hundreds of dollars for these sorts of “catalogs”. They can still be valuable today.

What’s more, the computer-searchable indexes and can be carried into the stacks and used like a Star Trek tricorder to home in and browse the collection(s). A bar code reader on the “tricorder” would be a helpful interface. 

Fun with the blending of newer and older library techniques?

[1] example set of printed catalogs/indexes - http://dh.crc.nd.edu/sandbox/pamphlets2indexes/
[2] example computer-searchable index - http://dh.crc.nd.edu/sandbox/pamphlets2analysis/search.cgi

—
Eric Morgan
University of Notre Dame