Il catalogo: dalla tradizione ai nuovi servizi

The explotion of digital resources, the pervasiveness of the web and a wide range of new services offered to the reader are driving both in Italy and worldwide a critical reflection on the library institution. To this end, the criteria traditionally determining the library organization as well as the tools that over the decades have been developed for the fulfillment of its mission are reviewed. Surveys have shown that a growing number of users prefer to carry out their search by using a search engine rather than visiting, even in virtual mode, a library and querying its catalog. The friendliness of Google, the richness of data available through Amazon and constantly updated, the informality of the blog contribute, as a whole, to set up a scenario compared to which the sophisticated tool created by the interaction between the catalog and other bibliographic utilities appears less and less adequate and responsive to market demands. Yet, if the catalog is declining and its procedures appear unsustainable, books and other information material are not dead, nor their complete conversion to digital form is to be expected in the short-medium term. In spite of massive investment in the creation of digital libraries and the replacement of analog with digital media, even in areas prone to greater conservatism, the catalogue still provides the most effective representation of the bibliographic universe from which our knowledge originates. A comparison between the most authoritative library institutions and subjects involved in the production, circulation, organization and preservation of bibliographical documents of any nature, should pave the way to the regeneration of the catalogue by expanding its functions and services and enhancing its integration with other research tools, thus ensuring the sustainability of this task