[nfais-l] Thinking the Unthinkable: A Library Without a Catalogue

[jilloneill at nfais.org]

Those NFAIS members with an interest in discoverability in the library environment and discovery services may have an interest in reviewing this speaker abstract and the accompanying Powerpoint accessible at: [http://utlib.ee/liber2012/presentations/n/Kortekaas_thinking_the_unthinkable_IV_2.ppt] http://utlib.ee/liber2012/presentations/n/Kortekaas_thinking_the_unthinkable_IV_2.ppt. Of particular interest is Slide #9 regarding patron behaviors (student, faculty).
 
My thanks to Lorcan Dempsey whose tweet this morning pointed me towards this item.
 
 
Thinking the Unthinkable: A Library without a Catalogue In 2011 this very idea was the starting point for reconsidering the future of discovery tools for Utrecht University Library. Like every other library, we have always offered our users a catalogue. In 2002 we built our own discovery tool aimed at finding electronic journal articles. We called it Omega and it immediately became a huge success. We were able to explain this division to our users. Looking for print material? Search the catalogue. Looking for electronic journals? Search Omega. In the last few years, things have been changing rapidly. New commercial discovery tools such as Primo and Summon entered the library market and we lost our pioneering role. Meanwhile more and more users are finding their way to our licensed journals through larger and stronger search engines like Google Scholar: freely available on the Internet and containing massive amounts of scientific material. But our users also switched to databases we paid for such as Web of Science and Scopus. Statistics showed that the use of our library catalogue and Omega was decreasing whereas the use of our licensed journals was still growing. The time had come to rethink the future of our library discovery tools. In the summer of 2011, a small study group was formed to start investigating the succession of the catalogue and Omega. Instead of looking for commercial discovery tools, we tried to view the situation from the perspective of our users. They are on the Internet and use Google or Google-like discovery tools. There they find the content they need and next expect the library to deliver the goods. If this is the world of our users, if this is the reality, if big commercial companies are able to offer freely accessible search engines containing scientific content, why then should we do our best to pull our users back to our library catalogue? What will our users be missing if we should decide to leave the discovery side of our services to parties that are far better equipped to build, keep up and constantly update their products? What would happen if we, as a library, should focus on the delivery part of the job? Starting the investigation from this point of view turned into a thrilling voyage of discovery leading to a bold and unconventional outcome. 
Speaker Information: Simone Kortekaas is Head of the Information & Marketing Department at Utrecht University Library since 2008. The department includes Reference Staff, Special Collections and the Open Access Publishing Team. 

Jill O'Neill
Director, Planning & Communication
NFAIS
Email: jilloneill at nfais.org
Voice: 215/893-1561
Web: [http://www.nfais.org] http://www.nfais.org
 
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