Before I sign off....

On The Record is a really cool report that came out over the course of this semester. Well, really cool or really scary, depending on how you look at it. Apparently, the Library of Congress, which has been providing cataloging services to libraries across the nation for chump change for years, is thinking about stopping the practice.

Basically, the LoC has been making their library cards (or files, now, in the digital age) available to other libraries for a nominal fee. Of course, if you provide any invaluable service for next to no cost, people are going to take advantage of you. So, due to all the demand, the Library's resources have been stretched to the limit. Employees are churning out library cards for the public library in Nowheresville, Nebraska (sorry, Nebraska fans! Um, go Huskers!) instead of cataloging and making available the Library's unique, historic documents. Obviously, this is a Bad Thing.

The solution outlined by the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control could be even worse, though. They want to pull out of the library card business entirely, seeking to be just another library in a community of libraries. Apparently, libraries need to do their own cataloging and share the fruits of their labor over the Internet. This is a little naive, and will probably never happen, but what if it does? Rigorous standards could go out the window as hundreds of variant cards are made available for any given book.

The whole issue seems to me to boil down to, "We're not getting paid for this." So why not pay them? Up the cost of these cards, use the proceeds to hire librarians for that exclusive purpose, and let your regular staff do their regular jobs. Sure, the added cost will sting smaller libraries, but wouldn't it be even worse if they had to hire an accredited librarian to build a catalog from the ground up? And this way, things will remain centralized and standards will be upheld.

Anyway, this could represent a real sea change in how cataloging works. Then again, it could be just another bureaucratic missive that means nothing. Read it for yourself!

http://www.loc.gov/bibliographic-future/news/lcwg-ontherecord-jan08-final.pdf