On the Horizon: The Web, Cataloged

Staff -- School Library Journal, 1/1/1999

If you think that a standardized catalog of Web sites is some Internet junkie's pipe dream, think again. The Online Computer Library Center (www.oclc.org) has established the Cooperative Online Resource Catalog (CORC). This is not yet a ready-to-use catalog, but a yearlong research project involving more than 20 academic and public libraries. The participants will work with CORC to develop a database and explore how to create and share metadata, the invisible coding behind a Web site that can contain descriptive information about the site, such as subject headings. CORC will also offer libraries MARC records for Web sites, said Thomas Hickey, CORC project manager. Although there are potentially millions of sites to be cataloged, said Hickey, "if you get the first hundred thousand, you get a lot of what people are looking for." There are other Web indexing projects out there, but "few have done it from a library perspective," said Hickey.