Union Catalog: Future Developments

Gradually screening, precision searches

In the future, as the union catalog’s content becomes vast and complex, normal searching will sometimes yield too many results. The union catalog plans to provide a ‘search within results’ function to shorten the search time and increase precision.

Classification by reviews

A future plan is to conduct classifications and organizations according to the search terms keyed in by the user; or to provide relevant word searches within the search results for effective increases in the use of the union catalog.

Mechanisms to strengthen digital property management

Within the reasonable use area, digital contents’ rights licensing and user management etc. issues need to be addressed. In addition, the cost of managing digital contents’ rights can be decreased with the assistance of applicable technology.

Strengthen international co-operation

Another plan is to develop outwards and enter into exchanges and cooperative projects with digital libraries and museums internationally; and to raise the international acceptability of Chinese-language information through utilizing metadata searches.