Part three in Karen Schneider's excellent series How OPACs Suck is now up over at the ALA TechSource blog, and, as usual, she's raising some pretty heavy issues:

In the pre-digital era, every library maintained its own card catalog. That was absolutely logical: how else would users find a book in the library? But in the digital era, every library still maintains its own card catalog—at least in the sense of having a unique database with a unique record for each bibliographic entity. Step back and ponder how really odd that it is. It would be as if Amazon created a local data set for each customer, with a separate installation of Amazon as well.

Prominent Library 2.0 advocates are already arguing on both sides of this debate, and there's no easy answer in sight. Many librarians view the centralization of the OPAC as the first step in surrendering our services (and eventually our existences) to a "universal" online library like Google. Others, however, see a central database for bibliographic records as a liberating option that will free up local librarians to devote their energies to truly local endeavors. With the data maintained elsewhere, the interface (and, hence, accessibility) becomes the central concern for the library.

In conversations on this issue, I usually fall on the side of centralization (though I'd hardly describe my position as rock solid). I can't even begin to predict whether that central database would be Library Thing or Open WorldCat or something else entirely, but given how much local cataloging consists of simply copying OCLC (or other consortia) records, there is a certain beautiful logic to eliminating the copying stage altogether and allowing local OPACs to directly query central records.

For this to work, however, that storehouse of bibliographic data must include a robust set of APIs that allow local libraries full access and manipulation of the data for OPAC display. Anything less would be little improvement over the current situation in which ILS vendors dictate what features are available. If my patrons want an interface that allows them to search by book publication city or DVD running time, I should have the ability to do just that.

This brings to mind one of the most eye-opening experiences of my career. When I attended my first OPAC design meeting, the committee chairperson had to break the news to everyone that we didn't even have the ability to change the look of the navigation buttons in the OPAC. The navigation buttons. Perhaps not the most integral component of the user experience, but certainly indicative of the trust ILS vendor have for local librarians and systems people. And this for a localized OPAC with localized data. It may seem paradoxical to say this, but centralization may be one way to gain more local control over our own information.

[ALA TechSource] How OPACs Suck, Part 3: The Big Picture