Card-Image Public Access Catalogues (CIPACs): Issues Concerned with their Planning and Implementation

This article identifies and discusses the issues and problems that need to be considered in the process of planning and implementing card-image public access catalogues (CIPACs). CIPACs are online library catalogues based on databases of digitised catalogue cards with more or less sophisticated mechanisms for browsing or searching. Solutions of this kind have been implemented by a number of libraries in various countries since the mid-1990s, mainly as inexpensive alternatives to full retrospective conversion of their old catalogues. Based upon a questionnaire and relevant literature, the article looks at the following aspects: cost, conversion speed, universal access, saving of space, preservational aspects, software selection, preparing the card catalogue for conversion, scanning and quality control, image standards, optical character recognition, manual and intellectual input, technological aspects, administrative tools, organisational aspects, peculiarities of old catalogues, presentation of CIPACs to the users, and life expectancy of card-image catalogues.