biblios.net and the future of cataloging: Not to be confused with just “Biblios“, which is LibLime’s new open source cataloger’s editor. That’s cool too, but Jonathan Rochkind is talking about biblios.net, which is basically a shared metadata store. That is, technological support for ‘cooperative cataloging’. That is, what we used to call a ‘bibliographic utility’. The Biblios editor uses the biblios.net shared metadata store, but it’s not restricted to use by the Biblios editor, anyone can use it.
The Web 2.0 trend has placed a renewed emphasis on interoperability and cooperation between systems and people. The digital libraries community is familiar with interoperability through technologies like OAI-PMH, but is disconnected from the general Web 2.0 community. This disconnect prevents the digital library from taking advantage of the rich network of data, services and interfaces offered by that community. This paper presents a case study of a collection within the Texas A&M Repository that was improved by adopting the principles of cooperation embodied by the term Web 2.0.