Local catalogs dying?

Roy Tennant’s article in the July 2007 issue of Library Journal is entitled “Demise of the Local Catalog”. In it, he argues that the integrated library system (ILS) should “…be relegated to the backroom where it has always belonged.”

After devoting a brief section to what vendors are currently working on vis a vis metasearching and unified searching (that is, searching for information in multiple sources), Tennant then argues that the catalog will disappear and some “centralized finding tool” will take its place. His final section discusses briefly the new WorldCat Local, which is essentially WorldCat with search results ranked by location and relevance, with local holdings on top, regional holdings next, and then worldwide holdings.

Tennant does disclose his employment with OCLC, which is important since OCLC developed WorldCat Local and has a lot riding on its success. I understand that Tennant is coming at this question from the point of view of a digital librarian, and new thinking is important in our profession, but I believe that Tennant is a bit dismissive of the local catalog and the fact that most public libraries still catalog mostly print books, compact discs, and movies, not online resources and websites, and so for a lot of public libraries especially, the local catalog is the “centralized finding tool.”

What do you all think? Any other perspectives?

Submitted by Aaron K.