In recent years, following the rise of online services such as Amazon, libraries and NBAs have begun to examine ways in which traditional catalogues can be enhanced via linking bibliographic records to a variety of third party resources. Options include:

  • Commercial OPAC enrichment services – including book jacket images, independent reviews, abstracts etc to assist the visual appeal of the catalogue
  • Links to online bookshops or publisher web sites – enabling the purchase of items retrieved in a results set
  • Linking to digital content – enabling direct access to retrieved items
  • Linking to external catalogue aggregations – enabling location of items in the nearest library worldwide e.g. OCLC WorldCat
  • Linking to social media – enabling the sharing of results with fellow users