OPAC Sesame!
A couple of days ago, Tim Spalding linked to an announcement that Simon Spero has released a nearly-complete copy of the Library of Congress Authority Files. This data wasn’t exactly hiding, but it hasn’t been easily accessible before, not in this way.
Caveat One: In the announcement, Simon makes it clear that the records aren’t necessarily usable for cataloging right out of the box.
Caveat Two: Due to my limited cataloging knowledge, I’m not entirely sure I fully understand what all of the implications of this are.
But Simon did a lot of tedious work to get this information out, and it looks as if it could lead to more open and accessible cataloging in and out of Libraryland. I think this is a very good thing. As I’ve said before, I fail to see what the World of Libraries has to gain by hording or encumbering information.
My Current Place of Work shares a catalog with my Future Place of Work. I am not all that happy with our current OPAC situation. Linking to a particular page in the catalog is problematic. The social, Web 2.0 aspects of the catalog aren’t there. In general usage, it functions just fine, but it could be so much more. I agree with Tim, library catalogs should be Google-friendly at the very least. It looks like my libraries will be looking into the possibility of new software for our OPAC in the not-to-distant future. Boy, wouldn’t it be something if we could jetpack forward from our current OPAC 1.0 to an OPAC 2.0 (or, heck, 3.0!)? And wouldn’t it be something if we saw a tsunami of free information flooding through LibraryLand, and it led to even better services for us and our users?
