Beyond the Online Catalog: Great Potential and Profound Change Available to Purchase

Today's online catalogs typically access machine‐readable records for books, journal titles, and audio‐visual materials, and indicate their circulation status. In the future, the database of these traditional records may be dwarfed by additional databases that will become part of the future electronic library. A few libraries are already experimenting with the addition of other text files to their catalogs. Broad‐band telecommunications networks and supporting technologies are being developed rapidly and will significantly affect the evolution of online catalogs. Growing applications of online catalogs, and network access to them, will require more sophisticated and powerful processing. Six prominent consultants—Joseph Becker, Gayla Kraetsch Hartsough, Raymond DeBuse, Jose‐Marie Griffiths, Rick Richmond, and Wilson Stahl—address these and related issues.