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The union catalogue of monographs published before 1976 is maintained by the Dutch National Library in card form and contains five to six million records from 95 libraries. The extent to which these records need to be converted into machine‐readable form depends on several factors. Does the holding library still exist? Does the holding library participate in the Pica shared cataloguing system and has it converted its own card catalogue? Did the holding library convert its card catalogue using another library system? Are the cards in the union catalogue still reliable or did the holding library discard volumes from its collection without notifying the National Library? A feasibility study showed that the holding data of 59 libraries could be removed without any further processing; this amounts to 72.6 per cent of the cards. For the remaining 27.4 per cent of the cards from 36 libraries, priorities for the retrospective conversion of their data in the union catalogue were determined.

The purpose of the study is to determine the most preferred catalogue format – card catalogue or online public access catalogue (OPAC) for searching library material in Oriental languages, i.e. Urdu, Arabic, Persian, Punjabi, Hindi, Sanskrit, Sindhi and Pashto of the Central Library, University of the Punjab, Lahore. It also explores the users’ searching behaviour for finding the library material in Oriental languages.

A purposive sample of 100 respondents was chosen for this study. The questionnaire contained both close- and open-ended questions. SPSS (version 11.5) was used for quantitative analysis of data. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used for reaching conclusions. The qualitative data analysis software “X-Sight” was used for analysing the qualitative data.

The study highlights the importance of both types of catalogue. Many of the findings of the study related to the card catalogue and OPAC are surprising when compared to their general perceptions. It is important to note that the users perceived the card catalogue as more effective for searching the library material in Oriental languages. However, they also face many problems while using both types of catalogues.

It is the first study of its type in Pakistan that explored the users’ perceptions and behaviour of searching Oriental language material from the card catalogue and OPAC. The findings of the study are valuable for library management, not only at the Central Library of Punjab University but also for other libraries. These findings can help in making both card catalogue and OPAC more effective and user-centred. It will also assist them to improve weaknesses of both types of catalogues.

This study compares the users’ preferences for card catalogue and/or OPAC when searching Oriental language material. There are very few studies available on this subject and most of them are dated.

The purpose of this paper is to share the experiences of NIALS Library in the use of computers in the production of catalogue cards. It also seeks to find out the experiences of other libraries in Nigeria.

This paper describes the procedures for automated generation of catalogue cards in the NIALS Library. It used the questionnaire method to collect data from 24 participants at the recently held workshop on Technical Services in Law Libraries, 26‐28 June 2007.

Found that most libraries in Nigeria use typewriters to produce catalogue cards. The use of computers in the generation of card catalogues is just beginning to emerge. OPACs are also relatively new as most libraries still operate card catalogue systems.

It is expected that other libraries would benefit from the experiences of NIALS Library.

This is the first study on the automated generation of card catalogues in Nigerian libraries. The study should help libraries that face difficulties with the manual production of card catalogues in making a decision in favour of automation.

It was a great pleasure to read your lucid exposition of the problem of our catalog and very profitable to reflect on your thoughtful solution. Your careful statement requires an equally careful analysis. Let me attempt one:

The card catalogue has as its prime objective the provision of multiple access points to the library's collection. To achieve this objective, card entries are made by author, title and subject headings. Within the main body of the catalogue card, other items of information are included in varying amounts of detail by librarians to aid the reader in locating and identifying a given material he may wish to consult within the library's holdings.

For historical reasons, the Austrian National Library (ANL) had only 10 per cent of its 2.9 million items available in its OPAC as of 1997. Its unique holdings from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries could still only be found via card catalogs. In order to make these unique collections accessible via the Web, the library scanned each catalog card into a digital image. An in‐house software application called KatZoom was used to browse and search the catalog card images. Within less than half a year, ANL’s unique holdings became accessible via the Web. At a later time, these digital images were converted to electronic text and incorporated into the local library systems.

This paper surveys card‐image public access catalogues (CIPACs) – online library catalogues based on databases of digitised catalogue cards and 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 a full retrospective conversion of their old catalogues. The article presents a Web page dedicated to CIPACs, identifies and describes four main categories of interface software for such catalogues, and provides a comparative overview of 50 CIPACs in 11 countries, looking at aspects such as geographical distribution, growth and size, software, number of catalogues, processing and index creation, navigation, image formats, and other features.

A survey of some means—mostly photographic or mechanised—of converting a large card catalogue to book form. Details are those calculated for the Main Library catalogues at Birmingham University.

Even though use studies of card catalogues are quite rare, use of online public access catalogues (OPACs) has been extensively investigated since early 1980s. Yet there are not many attempts to conduct comparative studies highlighting the differences in use of card catalogues and OPACs of the same library and user population. This paper reports an attempt made to study use of the OPAC of ISRO Satellite Centre (ISAC) library and compare the results with the findings of the study of use of card catalogue of the same library conducted 17 years ago. The paper not only brings various aspects of user behaviour about OPAC but also depicts the differences in user behaviour as well as the effects of technological changes from card catalogue (manual system) to OPAC (automated system).

Online catalogues and card catalogues can be compared from different perspectives and according to different criteria. An appropriate approach in this regard is to compare the two types of catalogue according to the processes in which bibliographic records are created (the input stage), manipulated (the storage stage) and retrieved (the output stage). Studies the concepts underlying the input‐storage/output of bibliographic records and reveals major differences between online catalogues and card catalogues. These differences are multiplied and widened when moving from input stage to output stage to such an extent that online catalogues can be considered as a significant departure from manual catalogues. The redesign for use in the online environment of bibliographical standards (cataloguing codes, MARC formats and ISBDs) which are based on the concept of the card catalogue should be based on the conceptual as well as the practical differences between the online catalogue and the card catalogue.