Digitalisering av manuella bibliotekskataloger : En undersökning på Uppsala universitetsbibliotek

Sammanfattning: While the Uppsala university library aims to have its whole collection searchable in Libris, the main digital library catalogue in Sweden, and Alvin, the digitized cultural heritage platform, the scope of their collections does not allow it to be done in a desireable time frame. An alternative to digitizing every object is to simply digitize the older manual library catalogues listing the collections, which is what the Uppsala university library has chosen to do. This study examines the digitization process of three of these older library catalogues: the Catalogue of music scores 1970-1980, the Catalogue of printed music -1970 and the Catalogue of Swedish biography. By observing the digitization process I analyse the functions and status of the library catalogues. What happens to a manual library catalogue when it is digitized? Does its function and its objective remain the same or does it change in response to this remediation process that is the digitization? Will the process of transforming it into a new digital format render the old format into another type of object, an historical artefact in its own right, as opposed to simply a list of other historical documents? By interviewing the library staff who perform the digitization of the catalogs and some of the users of them I seek to determine the traits of the library catalogue, and with the help of R. I. Clarkes seven objectives of the library catalogue I also try to discover what the catalogue means in its functions and usage for librarians and library users. Besides this, the study seeks to determine the status of the catalogue in relation to cultural heritage as defined by UNESCO, and the impact the digitization has on the object itself. This is a two years master’s thesis in Library and Information Science.