Scenarios for the Future of the Catalog

If lengthy, create separate pages and link to them here, with a short description.

Scenario 1 - The Catalog as Inventory Only

In this scenario, the catalog serves only as a bare inventory of library holdings (including licensed remote resources). The user interfaces are a combination of non-library resources (Google, courseware, links from electronic texts) and library systems (metasearch).

Scenario 1b - The Catalog as Inventory Layer in Library Service

This is an update to the idea of the catalog as inventory, because it places the catalog within an environment that has a service layer. The catalog will be only one component. In this scenario, the library is no longer a collection of resources, but is a collection of services.

Scenario 2 - The Catalog as Library Management

This defines the catalog as all of the ILS functions that are necessary to library management, including inventory, acquisitions, serials check-in, ERM, circulation. These modules interact with vendor systems and with one or more user interfaces.

Scenario 3 - The Catalog as ILS

Similar to today, the catalog has library management functions and also provides the user interface to the library's holdings. In addition to the user interface, there are machine interfaces that link the library's holdings to other systems of discovery such as vendor A&I systems, web sites, etc.

Scenario 4 - The Catalog as Information Discovery

This scenario will need to assume that the library management functions are being taken care of by other systems (and so could be compatible with Scenario #2). There are at least two possible levels of discovery that could be explored here:

1) discovery for the user who wants to know what the library can deliver NOW

2) discovery for the user who is doing research and wants to know what is available in the literature.

The latter goes beyond library holdings to various vendor systems (probably provided in a metasearch interface, although also available separately). The question is: does this also include web resources, and if so, how is this managed? (Why can't the library search interface also search Google?)

Scenario 5 - Centralized Bibliography, Local Amendments

This is based on the discussion on ngc4lib of the possibility of using one or more large databases of bibliographic cataloging that can be accessed by local catalogs, and only local amendments and local item information residing in the library's system. This scenario should reduce the hardware requirements for local systems, and would eliminate the need for libraries to store bibliographic information locally.