The Research Information Network's report, Creating catalogues: bibliographic records in a networked world, is out. I've only skimmed it, but it looks fascinating. I'm particularly interested in recommendation 2:
Removing the barriers
Libraries should give serious consideration to the benefits to moving from standalone catalogues to a shared catalogue for the whole UK HE sector. A meeting should be convened of representatives of all the key stakeholders, including the commercial vendors, aggregators, JISC and other national services, as well as academic and research libraries, to explore how the barriers to a shared catalogue might be reduced
Compare OCLC's announcement that they intend to move to the first 'Web-scale, cooperative library management service'.
At my workplace, a south London FE college, I use OCLC's old-style library management system, OLIB. I'm looking for a replacement. There are 433 further education institutions in the UK, each of them buying and running their own library management system. I know the RIN's brief only covers higher education, but the absence of further education from this discussion seriously weakens it.
