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Interesting idea. I have hear some special collections and arrives that do something with printable finding aids although they serve a slightly different purpose. I need to think about what the specific use case would be, but it doesn't seem like it would be a ton of work to do this. Incidentally, while not really the same idea, many years ago I investigated using VUFind to do something like this. Obviously, it wasn't printable but people could search just out multimedia collection and I also experimented with doing this with the collection of educational resources. I changed jobs before it was implemented, but in testing it seemed pretty usefully - especially the multimedia collection since in out catalog at the time they were hidden and being a residential campus, students liked to borrow ones that were not only educational, but entertaining. Of course this was before Netflix, et al. existed. Edward On Tue, Oct 24, 2017 at 7:56 AM, Eric Lease Morgan <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > 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 >