Karen said:


>This is an interesting vision from the cataloger perspective. If I read 
>you correctly, in a distributed network, for the same item there could 
>be "records" (profiles or graphs of data) that are suitable for public 
>libraries, ones that are suitable to specialized libraries, others 
>suitable to national libraries, or archives, etc.
 
What would a vendor do who has clients in all of the categories above?  
What does a vendor do who can afford to have only one version of data
per manifestation in its files for all clients?

Our bottom line depends on the reuse of records.

We already have this problem with phrases in different languages (if
one does not use the ISBD abbreviations as codes).  This would be even
more difficult.   Perhaps I will just have to shut up shop?  There
seems to be no place for such services as SLC in this brave new
bibliographic world.

It has been said that only the needs of larger libraries with inhouse
IT ability are being served.  That may be correct.  I don't see how a
small library with no professional staff would be able to function in
such an environment.


   __       __   J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([log in to unmask])
  {__  |   /     Special Libraries Cataloguing   HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/
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