Catalogues – what now?

(Reviewed by DIPPOLD Péter)

Könyvtári Figyelő (Library Review) vol. 16 (52) 2006. no. 4. pp. 521–527.

The article is reviewing and commenting on Lorcan Dempsey’s and Chris Anderson’s articles about the future of library catalogues, concerning the “Long Tail“ phenomenon. Anderson argued that products that are in low demand or have low sales volume can collectively make up a market share that rivals or exceeds the relatively few current best sellers, if the store or distribution channel is large enough. (Examples of such mega-stores include the online retailer Amazon and the online video rental service Netflix.) According to this logic libraries collect predominantly materials representing the Long Tail category. However, the information given by library OPACs is insufficient for increasing usage, so the collections should provide access to the documents themselves. Cataloguing is expensive, library catalogues are sophisticated to use, while search engines are simple and popular – that is why the use of library OPACs is falling back. Libraries need to enable interoperability between their catalogues and search engines, and to enhance shared catalogues.