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Brad, Con and Eric raise some good points arguing in favor of local systems in libraries. Interestingly, the functions that inarguably need local, institutional components analogous to today's catalog are centered around patrons and communities: 1. manage collections of local interest 2. gather usage information 3. protect user privacy 4. manage electronic rights/entitlements/access 5. enable user-generated content The common thread here is user- and community- centric orientation of these functions. With the exception of (1), today's catalog systems are not well adapted to providing the functions. I hope it will not be considered "radical" if I offer this lemma: The next generation of library systems must be "about" communities of users more than they are "about" collections of resources. Eric -- 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