Catalog Companies – Can You Hear Me Now?

Basically I am looking – again – for my dream catalog.  I sense that we are not there yet – but I have to wonder why not.  If Google Book Search can do it – why can’t we?  I am hoping that there is a product out there that I just don’t know about yet.

I would like marc records and an automated catalog that would search/do the following:

1.  The traditional standard subject areas
2.  The table of contents
3.  The index of the book
4.  The full text of the book
5.  Allow students to comment & rate the books they read (the ubiquitous 5 star and reader-reviews we see on Amazon et al)
6.  Allow students to view & print chapters online.  I know… even Google & Amazon (Googlezon?) do not allow folks to print.  But if a library owns the books, and if the chapters are only printable by entering a library card – then why not?

I would want to be able to expand or contract the search according to my needs.  For instance, if I am searching for information on Renaissance artists – a standard subject heading search would do.  If I am searching for Albrecht Durer, I would want to be able to do a table of contents search and perhaps an index search so I could find out which art encyclopedias have information.  And finally, if I want to find the effects of violent media on children, I might want to search the full text of the books our library owns.

If Google Book Search and Amazon can do it – why not our library catalogs?  For those of us who might not want features 3-6 – they could be turned off.  Personally, I would KILL for those abilities.

Yes – I know folks can search Googlezon or World Cat, locate a book and then see what libraries own it.  Why should they have to do that?  There is a big advantage for our students to search our own library collections which have been carefully assembled and weeded to meet their unique needs.

Please tell me that the promised land is in sight!!

2 thoughts on “Catalog Companies – Can You Hear Me Now?

  1. Interesting requests Jacqueline. Take a look at the survey here and make your requests known. http://bibrecords.ning.com/
    I’m waiting for a similar thing but it’s probably going to be a long time coming. Right now the best option seems to be working with Google Book Search (which has its own problems). And most of us can’t afford to put our records on WorldCat and maintain them there.
    The problem with allowing users to print pages from the catalog is a simple one of copyright. As Amazon discovered when it gave a voice to the new Kindle, specific permission has to be given for access to information in ways other than the original copy access. Thus, although users can borrow the physical book they don’t have the right to an electronic version of the book. E-book subscription services are very careful to allow only a certain number of users to use the e-book for a very specific time which they have licensed to the library. I don’t know if we will ever reach the day when everything or even near everything in the library collection is freely available electronically even to local library patrons.
    I don’t think it’s a problem with library automation systems. It seems to me that you requesting has much more to do with copyright issues.

  2. Thanks for responding Tom. Certainly #6 is a copyright issue – and I can see where it might take a long time (if ever) to get there. But I don’t see #1-5 being a copyright infringement in any way. They strike me as very possible in light of the technology that is obviously already available.

    In the past when a student did not find Albrecht Durer in the catalog, they came to us for help. Today, they give up and go to Google instead. We need a catalog at least as friendly and helpful as Google.

    So – I keep dreaming…..

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