This collection of eight essays provides an excellent introduction to the pressing issues shaping the future of the library catalogue. The title’s “2.0” refers to the “next-generation” catalogue and beyond, rather than specifically to the “social catalogue” and its “Web 2.0” features (though these are covered). The contributors write with both authority and clarity, and their various contributions fit together well. The focus is on the catalogue’s role in the larger search and content environment, rather than the details of cataloguing, traditional or otherwise.
The first chapter provides a good overview of recent research into the use and effectiveness of the various features of “next-generation” catalogues, noting that some of these features have proven more popular than others. One thing is certain, however: users prefer instant content. The second essay covers the technical aspects of some of the features that could be, and indeed sometimes have been, borrowed from the successful search engines (e.g. relevance ranking). Next, the widely regarded library technology expert, Marshall Breeding, details how the new “discovery services” have started to implement the features that the library management systems have been slow to take up. He notes in particular, as do other contributors, the trend towards “aggregation”, where data are stored at the network level, in the “cloud”. He also notes the potential for personalisation, in which users are offered particular resources based, in part, on their past behaviour. Breeding suggests that a tipping point may well be on the horizon, when the old-style catalogues finally give way to the new-style search systems.
The following two chapters focus on specific aspects of the new-style catalogue. First, an implementation of a mobile library catalogue (i.e. a library catalogue interface for mobile devices) is reported by librarians at the University of Amsterdam, who raise a number of issues (not least the lack of user enthusiasm to link to content on a mobile) that require further investigation; currently, take-up would appear to be limited. Second, the “FRBRization” of a public library web portal from Belgium is discussed: although the case study is not particularly new, it does include discussion of the relationship between FRBR and other areas of innovation.
The book then progresses towards a vision in which library catalogues become much more integrated into the networked world than they presently are, perhaps even to the extent of no longer being discrete entities. For the last three writers, a critical component of this vision is Linked Data, and the sixth chapter provides a fairly gentle introduction to the nature and application of Linked Data in the library context. Next, Karen Calhoun, formerly of OCLC and prior to that author of the somewhat controversial Library of Congress report, The changing nature of the catalog (2006), advocates the creation of a “central zone” for digital scholars that transcends library boundaries, based on open access. To support intellectual access to this zone, librarians would engage in “distributed metadata management” rather than traditional “bibliographic control”. As always, Calhoun is provocative. It is not clear what the funding model would look like in this brave new world, but the essay contains some interesting ideas.
Finally, Lorcan Dempsey, Vice President at OCLC, offers a list of 13 (overlapping) issues that need to be considered by those currently managing library catalogues. He makes the point that in the past, information resources were scarce, while user attention was abundant; today resources are abundant, while attention is scarce. It is therefore imperative that library search systems are integrated into the wider information environment, as they will otherwise be bypassed. It is likewise necessary for these systems to be able to grab users’ attention, by making them more tailored to users’ needs and more intrinsically part of users’ workflows. Like Calhoun, Dempsey argues that librarians should focus on the network rather than local level, where the users are more likely to be and where there is more likelihood of sufficient data to support new discovery mechanisms. Furthermore, if the metadata coordinated at this level is provided as Linked Data, it could be used (potentially) in all sorts of new ways. Interestingly, Dempsey sees an opportunity for librarians to reassert their expertise as co-managers of shared authority files and controlled vocabularies, which can also be provided as Linked Data. These files and vocabularies would enhance the use of the metadata to which they were linked, an increasing amount of which will probably be coming from outside of the library cataloguing department.
While the pessimist might say that a book about the future of the library catalogue ought to be a very short book, this book presents a more upbeat, though still measured, picture of the efforts being made to meet the challenge that Google et al. have thrown up to libraries. Although it does not explicitly redefine the library catalogue, the book makes it clear, I think, that the institutional catalogue of the future will only exist as part of a much larger system. The good news is that there are many ways in which librarians could contribute to this system.
