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At 2:25 PM -0400 6/6/06, Teresa Victoriana Sierra wrote: >Maybe you ought to sit with a reference librarian and ask why and >how the catalog and OPAC are used. Are you a reference librarian who can please explain why and how today's catalog and OPAC are used, so we can think about how libraries of tomorrow can be designed to best accomplish these functions? My point is not that library catalogs are not useful things today- obviously they are. My point is that many of their functions are best accomplished in tomorrow's library without using a catalog per se. By catalog, I mean a local institutional indexed storage system containing detailed metadata records about items in a library. Let's consider one function of todays catalog- inventory control. A lot is known about inventory control systems- they're used in industry for everything from autoparts to supermarkets. It seems to me that a well designed inventory control system for tomorrows library would probably involve RFID tags- that way the library Inventory control system (LICS) could know where the books are in stead of only where they should be. Let's consider another function of a library catalog- resource discovery for users. Does anyone here really believe that in TEN years Google and/or competitors (maybe even mine) won't be able to hook into an inventory control system and deliver full-text, faceted, clustered, instantly relevant, translated search results out the wazoo from all the content in your library? If today's catalogs did an acceptable job of search we might be able to start a discussion. We need good global metadata catalog/registries. Which of today's catalog functions will require a local institutional catalog tomorrow? -- Eric Hellman, Director OCLC Openly Informatics Division [log in to unmask] 2 Broad St., Suite 208 tel 1-973-509-7800 fax 1-734-468-6216 Bloomfield, NJ 07003 http://www.openly.com/1cate/ 1 Click Access To Everything