http://www.aurochs.org/aurlog/2005/03/23/end-of-cataloging/ Cows and stuff Sun, 08 Jan 2012 14:39:55 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9.2 hourly 1 http://www.aurochs.org/aurlog/2005/03/23/end-of-cataloging/comment-page-1/#comment-1339 Tom Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 http://www.aurochs.org/aurlog/libraries/cataloguing/endofcataloging.html#comment-1339 The difference would be that the local systems would not have to maintain high quality and consistent records in the same way. More effort could be put into it centrally. A useful example would be with authority control: when Smith, John, 1900- dies, GoogleWorldCat would change it to Smith, John, 1900-2006. The rest of world would have to do Absolutely Nothing to maintain their catalogues, while now even those in the wise situation of using LC authorities would have to import new headings or manually change them, a needless effort. Extending this to all aspects of bibliographic control would be greatly beneficial. Governance is a problem, but I would see national libraries being obvious guardians: they could maintain mirror sites, and ensure locally published items are adequately dealt with (as they should do anyway in many cases anyway), although they could do it better perhaps if, say, university libraries diverted some of their resources towards a central pool. The comments here are a little basic I will admit, though I am erring for the moment on the side of caution and am happy to merely fight a running battle with comment spam rather than anything more serious. The difference would be that the local systems would not have to maintain high quality and consistent records in the same way. More effort could be put into it centrally. A useful example would be with authority control: when Smith, John, 1900- dies, GoogleWorldCat would change it to Smith, John, 1900-2006. The rest of world would have to do Absolutely Nothing to maintain their catalogues, while now even those in the wise situation of using LC authorities would have to import new headings or manually change them, a needless effort. Extending this to all aspects of bibliographic control would be greatly beneficial. Governance is a problem, but I would see national libraries being obvious guardians: they could maintain mirror sites, and ensure locally published items are adequately dealt with (as they should do anyway in many cases anyway), although they could do it better perhaps if, say, university libraries diverted some of their resources towards a central pool. The comments here are a little basic I will admit, though I am erring for the moment on the side of caution and am happy to merely fight a running battle with comment spam rather than anything more serious.

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