Quo Vadis, Cataloging?

Under the leadership of Ruth Carter’s generation, cooperative, shared cataloging grew and flourished among academic and research libraries. The authors provide an overview of trends and challenges from a golden age of expanding budgets and international cooperation during the 1970s and 1980s and later responses to the economic retrenchment and demographic changes of the 1990s and early 2000s. Responses to current challenges, including the impact of outsourced cataloging, increasing complexity of cataloging rules, and emerging technological options, are discussed.