Future catalogs: food for thought

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Future catalogs: food for thought

Originally appeared in slightly different form as a March 13, 2008 post, "food for thought and discussion," on the NGC4LIB list (ngc4lib@listserv.nd.edu). Published March 14, 2008

by Eric Lease Morgan

When I think about the library "catalog" I think that it will contain more than just metadata about library materials but also the materials themeselves. Think mostly books, journal articles, encyclopedia articles, definitions, images, data sets, etc. Moreover, the library "catalog" will enable people to do things with the items in the collection. It is more than just find and get. For example:

  • Add to my collection - Once an item is displayed, select it to add it your "your library" and optionally add it to a sub-section of your library. This is like bookmarking.
  • Annotate - As you read a text, the system will allow you to comment on the text and associate each comment with a particular word, sentence, paragraph, section, etc. This would function much like a scholarly annotated version of text, like The Annotated Alice.
  • Cite - Select a text. Choose an option. Return a citation of the item in any number of formats. MLA. Chicago. Etc. It would be nice if each text could be associated with a URI.
  • Compare & contrast - This is one of the "kewlest" functions. Select any number of texts. Two. Five. Fifty. One hundred. Select compare. The system reads each text and analyzes the words it finds. It counts the words (much like a concordance) and returns a report listing things such as: these words appear in 90% of the documents, these words appear in 45% of the documents, this document contains most of the words contained in the other documents, this document contains the most number of unique words. By going through this process a person would be able to see which documents were similar to each other and which documents were dissimilar. Optionally, the user could seed the compare & contrast documents with word or phrases to focus on a particular idea.
  • Create different version of - Given a document in TEI, transform the document into PDF, something designed for your iPhone or XHTML. Given a document created for one ebook reader, convert it into a version for another reader.
  • Create flip book - A simple approach it to create an interface allowing the person to "flip" through the book very quickly similar to the way a person makes pages turn very quickly in their hands. Even better, extract all the images from one or more texts and create a slide show of the images. This will allow a person to scan/browse many texts quickly and select a text accordingly.
  • Create tag cloud from - As a graphic illustration of what a text(or collection of texts) is about, count the number of times words appear in a document and lay them out according to their rank, much like del.icio.us tag clouds, only bigger.
  • Delete from my collection - This is the inverse of Add To My Collection.
  • Do concordance against - A concordance counts words, allows a person to list the words in alphabetic or numeric order, and then points you to the location of the words in the text. This is just about the oldest form of indexing and it was originally applied to the Bible hundreds of years ago.
  • Do rudimentary morphology - Given a word and a dictionary/thesaurus, extract from one or more texts the way the word was used, both forward and backward. The system would take advantage of alternations in spellings as well as meanings. Tricky!
  • Find opposite - Determine the "aboutness" of a document. Use a thesaurus to find the antonym of the "aboutness" and find new documents.
  • Find similar - This is the same as Find Opposite except the system looks for synonyms.
  • Hilight - This is similar to Annotate except the annotations are graphical in nature. This is similar to using a hi-lighter pen on books or diagramming sentences.
  • Incorporate into syllabus - Link a given document to another document and supplement the link with a short blurb such as an assignment.
  • Map to controlled vocabulary term - Exploit user tags and/or statistical analysis to determine the "aboutness" of a document or the documents' author authority heading, and find the closest match in a "subject heading" list such as LCSH or Dewey.
  • Plot on a map - Given a gazetteer, find all the places in a document and plot them on a map in terms of both time and place. Associate each point with a passage in the text.
  • Print - Move the document from the screen to paper. It would be even cooler if the printed version were printed like books are "supposed" to print--odd pages appear on the right, chapter headers appear on odd pages, title page and verso, "properly" numbered pages, back-of-the-book indexes, colophon, etc.
  • Purchase - Own the item in exchange for money.
  • Rate - Give the text a numeric rating such as 1-5.
  • Review - Write a description of the text and its content. This a verbose version of Rate.
  • Save - Copy a version of the text from the remote site to your local file system.
  • Search - Enter a term and return/navigate the user to sections of one or more documents.
  • Search my collection - Query only the documents you have put on your "bookshelf."
  • Share - Create one or more lists of documents and publish the lists.
  • Summarize - This is very similar to Review but is not necessarily intended to include value judgments. This can be done by a human, but it can also be done by a computer through various extraction techniques.
  • Tag - Associate with your own controlled (or not so controlled)vocabulary terms.
  • Trace author - Determine author(s) of document, and find other works by or about them.
  • Trace citation - Extract citations from text's bibliography. See who else has used those citations, both before the text was written and/or after the text was written.
  • Translate - Convert the text(s) or passages into other languages.

What is this thing called the library "catalog" anyway? Maybe it is more like an index as opposed to a catalog, and maybe it is really a tool to assist in the work of library constituents.

Food for thought and discussion.

Eric Lease Morgan heads the Digital Access and Information Architecture Department at the University Libraries of Notre Dame. Used by permission.

Editor's note: We need mind-stretching ideas to help us consider a range of futures--what's possible, what's feasible, and what's desirable. Leaders need to be aware of and involved in these discussions: Not to rubber-stamp a list as ambitious as this and say "Go do it," but to consider what's being said and the service implications.

Morgan's post hit NGC4LIB at 8:41 a.m. EDT. By the end of the day, there were already 15 responses. You can follow the discussion at the official list archive (which Morgan calls "Official but s l o o w") or at the Infomotions version (which Morgan calls "Simple and fast"). (You may need to join NGC4LIB to view the official archive.) A few excerpts from early comments appear on the Talk page; your comments are also welcome.

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