Monday 21 January 2008

LOC Report

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article today about a recently released report , "On the Record: Report of the Library of Congress Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control", from the Library of Congress. Termed a "call to action" for libraries, it is the result of a year of work by research librarians and executives from technology companies like Google and Microsoft, with input from the public. They looked at how libraries can improve the distribution and use of their materials in a technology-centric environment and suggest that they should share records more with one another, make greater use of the Web, and bring more attention to their special collections.
The study is worrisome to some in the library community because it suggests that the Library of Congress should scale back its role as the leading organization for cataloging and classifying library materials.

No comments: