Herding cats: Options for organizing electronic resources

Abstract

With the rapid growth in the number of electronic resources available via the Internet, a variety of methods have been developed to organize and access these objects. Librarians, scholars, and computing engineers have each applied their own techniques to the process. This article examines the strengths and weaknesses of organizational systems developed by each group. The appropriateness of including remotely accessed electronic resources as part of a library collection is discussed, and the success of traditional cataloging methods and structures for describing remote electronic resources is examined. These traditional cataloging techniques are compared to other methods for describing, organizing, and accessing electronic documents such as TEI headers, browsing lists, and robot generated search indexes. For Metacatalogs of the future to be successful tools for organizing and accessing all information, methods must be developed to utilize all existing organizational tools by layering, exchanging, and translating data within a loosely-coupled organizational system.

Publication Date

1-1-1996

Journal Title

Internet Reference Services Quarterly

Publisher

Routledge Taylor and Francis

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

10.1300/J136v01n04_04

Document Type

Article

Rights

Copyright © 1991 Routledge

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