Think of what happens, for example, if you combine article level data and catalogue data.
This is a potentially useful service: it will be interesting to see if it lasts. I use 'syndication' to cover several ways of doing this.
OCLC has just made Worldcat. And OCLC has been very active in this area with Open WorldCat, where member data is exposed to several search engines. Often used in a neutral business sense, it is not surprising - given what may be at stake - that sometimes discussion of sourcing is shot through with political preferences or emotional attachment. Currently it checks prices in several book buying sites, will look in selected library sites, or will interact with Worldcat. I presume that the project will converge on a small number of terms so as to encourage participation and adoption by publishers and search engines alike. By default it takes a snapshot when it creates a record, but this seems a little slow and I turned it off.
The piece describes his work on the Southdale Center, the first enclosed mall in the US. It describes an international range of projects and intiatives.
However, in recent times we have seen growing interest in moving more strongly to the shared level. There were a couple of signs up about its fiftieth anniversary, but otherwise it was very much like . Currently it checks prices in several book buying sites, will look in selected library sites, or will interact with Worldcat. A service might provide a search of the collection, but other services may also be interesting, providing a list of new items for example.
The work that Dave Pattern has done with the University of Huddersfield catalogue is an example here.
Historically, users have built their workflow around the services the library provides. In that context, the more we know about the characteristics of collections and how they compare becomes of more interest.
This is done for purposes of searching, browsing, discovery, translation, mapping, semantic reasoning, subject indexing and classification, harvesting, alerting etc.
Think of Amazon or Google Scholar. The work that Dave Pattern has done with the University of Huddersfield catalogue is an example here. The latter they associate with a centrally managed model, often with dedicated funding.