Navigation Menu Introduction What is a database? What's in a database? The Internet Library Catalogs Online Databases Yahoo Yahoo2 Google Quiz

Library Catalogs Electronic library catalogs are the successors of library card catalogs, and although they perform a similar function (i.e., locating material in the library), they do it quite differently. If you have just finished the section on searching the Internet you may want to pay particular attention to how electronic library catalogs and indexes differ from Internet indexes. Electronic library catalogs and indexes are much more structured than Internet indexes and include only those resources selected by librarians and indexers. Electronic library catalogs and indexes can also be searched by subject headings, which describe what a book or magazine article is about. Electronic library catalogs first began to appear in libraries in the 1970's. At first they were no more than an automated version of the old library card catalog. Patrons were limited to looking for material in their own library by author, exact title, or exact subject heading. This situation began to change in the late 1980's. Many of today's electronic library catalogs allow a patron to search for material by keyword (which searches for the words in the title, subject heading and note fields of an item record). Libraries are now beginning to enter the Table of Contents of books into the catalog record as well. This allows patrons to locate information in a particular chapter of a book. Some libraries are even beginning to catalog Internet resources, which makes the library catalog similar to an Internet index like Yahoo! More and more library catalogs are becoming sophisticated search engines that link people to both print and electronic resources.