[WEB4LIB] Re: FW: Important Article

[Dan Lester]

At 02:53 PM 3/28/99 -0800, David Merchant wrote:
>I believe I'm going to have to disagree.  While on the surface, this looks
>great, there are a couple of issues not addressed:
>
>1. the 'Net has connectivity problems.  Where would this "one catalog" sit?

A great many "big catalogs" or "gigantic repositories" are replicated in 
multiple locations on multiple continents.  There is no need for them to be 
in one place only, and the "one catalog" could "sit" in multiple locations.

>wants to find out if there is a certain book on the local shelf will have
>to wait a long time to find that info out, and may find shelf browsing faster.
Who said anything about not allowing local shelf browsing?  In addition, 
even if there were a "world catalog", nothing would prevent a local library 
from having its own catalog.  In fact, OCLC could be considered an example 
of such a system.

>2. Local collection.  Sometimes I want to find which books on topic X _my_
>library has.  I don't care what others may or may not have, I want to find
>what my library has.

Fine.  Any catalog worth its salt has the ability to do that.  Check out 
http://catalyst.boisestate.edu and you'll see that it is a shared catalog 
between two libraries.  And, there are also various special collections 
that can be searched independently.  The same could hold for any other set 
of collections in a catalog.

>and thus have to wade through them all to find
>the few my library has on the self right now.  I pick a couple of titles
>and then go and see which one isn't checked out yet.

Once again, any catalog worth anything at all will TELL you if the book is 
checked out and when it is due.  Naturally, you could go to the shelf and 
find that a book that wasn't checked out wasn't on the shelf, but at least 
you wouldn't go on a wild goose chase if they were all checked out.

>3.  Up-to-dateness/configuration.  Can the local library update the global
>catalog?

Yes.  Note the Boise State catalog cited above, or OCLC for that matter.

>And some countries/nations
>will not allow certain items to be available to their people, they won't
>even want it to show up in the return hits of a search.  They won't sign
>up.  Thus, not a Global Catalog.  In fact, the whole article ranks of
>North-American-centric thinking.

Regardless of the "whatever-centric" thinking that may or may not be 
present, no system will ever be adopted by everybody (unless they appoint 
one of us King of the World....but of course he died out there in the North 
Atlantic anyway)

And, coming from a North American source, it hardly seems surprising that 
it may have such thinking.....just as a similar document from another 
country or region may be oriented to its way of thinking.

cheers

dan

--
Good, Fast, and Cheap: Which two of the three would you like?
Dan Lester, 3577 East Pecan, Boise, ID 83716 USA 208-383-0165
dan at 84.com   http://www.84.com/  http://www.idaholibraries.org/
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