RICHARD DE GENNARO A Strategy for the Conversion Of Research Library Catalog To Machine Readable Form

This paper describes in very general terms a strategy for converting the retrospective catalogs of the nation's research libraries into machine readable form. The method envisages a class-by-class conversion and printing out in main entry order of the shelflist of the Library of Congress. The larger libraries would compare their shelflists against these lists adding their location symbols and unique titles to the master machine record and pulling from the master record machine readable catalog copy for their own holdings in each class. The resulting augmented LC master record would become a kind of national union catalog in machine readable form.