Thinking the unthinkable – doing away with the library catalogue, Based on a paper presented by Simone Kortekaas at the 37th UKSG Annual Conference, Harrogate, April 2014. Insights: the UKSG journal, published online Monday, November 03, 2014.

“In this article we will first explain how we came to our decision to focus on delivery instead of worrying about discovery. Then, we will describe what actions we undertook to prepare ourselves and our users for a new situation and we will show what obstacles we still have to overcome to facilitate delivery. Finally, we will elaborate on the reaction of our users to the first steps we made in this process. The aim of this article is to encourage you to rethink and evaluate your own efforts on discovery and delivery. We think that many of the problems academic libraries are facing can only be solved when we as libraries, publishers and vendors collaborate closely together on
delivery issues. Like every other library, we had always offered our users a catalogue. In 2002, we built our own discovery tool, Omega, aimed at finding electronic journal articles. At that time, we were able to explain the division to our users: ‘Looking for print material? Search the catalogue’; ‘Looking for electronic journals articles? Search Omega’.”