Libraries in Germany – Expert Discussion

In some libraries, it may still be possible to find a card catalogue whose principle of organisation has remained the same over the generations. Its electronic successor, however, is caught up in a rapid development

In the beginning was OPAC: the electronic version of a library catalogue, which could be usefully accessed without in-depth library skills and not only on the spot at libraries, but also initially over Telnet and later on the WWW. By the mid-1990s, Web OPACs were part of the range of products offered by providers for library systems. In the founding years of the Internet, libraries could score points simply by offering the extra of mere access through the Web. Yet Version 1.0 of the catalogue in the Net was probably never a particularly popular research tool, as has been shown by the prompt migration of users to other information service providers and by studies of preferred points of entry for scientific research.

“Next Generation Catalogues”

Commercial providers of library systems, and especially librarians themselves, have taken this phenomenon as an opportunity to develop the WebOPAC further into Catalogue 2.0. The “Next Generation Catalogues”, as Catalogue 2.0 is called in the Anglo-American world, blazes new core paths in technology, accessing, presentation and development work in library services.

1. Flexible system architecture: Catalogue 2.0 indexes meta-data from various sources with search engine technology. Through interfaces, it samples further information such as indications of availability and supplementary meta-data such as book covers or tables of contents and makes it accessible for inspection together with the bibliographic information in the presentation layer. Catalogue 2.0 is also decoupled from the traditional library system, which creates new opportunities for the integration of further meta-data and additional services.

2. Interfaces and standards: Catalogue 2.0 makes interfaces available through which meta-data in different environments and applications can be adopted or searched. Catalogue 2.0 is also an experimental field for the use of new library data models such as FRBR (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records), which aims (among other things) at consolidating various printings and editions of individual works and so at providing greater clarity.

3. Discovery instead of searching: Catalogue 2.0 makes the accessing of contents more visible and usable – for example, through browsing functions and so-called “drilldowns”, the possibility of subsequently limiting of the number of hits by further relevant keywords and other accessing characteristics.

4. Tagging and Co.: In addition to accessing libraries, users of Catalogue 2.0 develop their own keywords, evaluate or review literature and compile their own bibliographic lists, which are open to the perusal of others. This additional meta-data, often called “user generated content”, can be consulted for the development of services pertaining to acquisition and recommendation of books.

5. “Usability” and “User Experience”: In many places, the development of Catalogue 2.0 is carried out in cooperation with its users: on the one hand, by tests that test and optimise usability, and on the other hand by sometimes extensive studies that research the demands made on the catalogue and test ideas for new features – particularly those capable of improving the low user-friendly values of conventional catalogues.

The project “beluga”

The guiding principle of “beluga”, a Catalogue 2.0 project of the Hamburg university libraries, is orientation to the needs of the users. First of all, one of the “classical” functions of the 2.0 Catalogue, tagging, will be omitted from beluga; students and teachers have been able to develop as little enthusiasm for this function as for the possibility of opening personal bibliographies to others. Studies in the Anglo-American world also show that these social functions of the 2.0 Catalogue have not yet found the hoped-for acceptance and failed to fulfil the often invoked vision of a library catalogue as a tool of collaborative knowledge management.

The reason for this may be that users have more urgent problems on their minds: they want as many possible titles relevant to a subject to appear on the first page of a hit list – no small challenge for the corresponding algorithm that should sort both the names and the placement of the already mentioned drilldowns.

Rules for those functions that permit the further use of bibliographic information have been greeted positively: the offering of various styles of citation and formats for text processing and literature administration, interfaces that allow the querying of catalogues from other applications, and the exporting of personal lists into leaning management systems and social networks.

The next stage of the evolution of library catalogues is already in view: it will equip normative data and other elements of bibliographic and accessing information with identifiers or handles and so make them available for use outside the catalogue. The rich hoard of library meta-data and information will contribute to launching the third generation of Internet services – the semantic web, which will generate references among themes, places and persons.