The economics of catalog conversion

Gorman, Michael

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/1069 Copy

Description

Title

The economics of catalog conversion

Author(s)

Gorman, Michael

Issue Date

1976

Keyword(s)

• Libraries --Automation
• Libraries --Economics
• Library science --Data processing
• Online catalog

Abstract

The title of this paper is as daunting to the person who must deliver it as it probably is to those who must listen to it. The topic of catalog conversion is a scattered one; it is something that has been carried out in recent years in a variety of different institutions and in a number of different ways. Major studies, such as the RECON and CONSER studies, have been made but no single method has emerged as the best and most economical. As a result, although the literature of the subject is extensive, the hard statistical and economic data contained within that literature are conflicting and, of course, are constantly being falsified by technological advancements on the one hand, and the ever-present inflation in the Western world on the other. What I wish to do in this paper, therefore, is to sketch the processes involved in catalog conversion, and secondly to try to indicate the relative economic factors which apply to the various processes and strategies involved. I shall focus on one particular conversion project carried out within the British Library for which I had some responsibility, and I trust that this project will yield relevant information to librarians wishing to convert catalogs in the United States.

Publisher

Graduate School of Library Science. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Series/Report Name or Number

Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing (13th : 1976)

ISSN

0069-4789

Type of Resource

text

Language

en

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/1069

Copyright and License Information

Copyright owned by Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 1977.

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