Introduction

When Balzac wrote Lost Illusions in 1837, he noted that the “Stanhope press and the ink-distributing roller were not as yet in general use in small provincial printing establishments.” In the era of online platforms, open (and common) application programming interfaces (API) can be the equivalent of the ubiquitous printing press, which expanded local and global conversations. Now, librarians, vendors, and users are using the social catalog to network and expand conversations in 2007.

In this issue of netConnect, which focuses on the social catalog, John Blyberg adds to his ILS Bill of Rights, advocating for continuing cooperative development between libraries and vendors through open APIs. Then, Richard Akerman (Science Library Pad) proposes building new, enhanced catalogs based on library web services and a service-oriented architecture. Finally, Kate Bouman and her colleagues at Binghamton University Libraries describe their use of Grokker's software to perform a visual search across the catalog, databases, and a little company called Google.

Gail Golderman and Bruce Connolly look at database alerts; Melissa Rethlefsen examines messaging software, including Twitter. And Karen Coombs says born digital content requires integrated staffing, since the content created online may be the most difficult to preserve.