Copy cataloging exists because typing a full MARC record from scratch for a title that already exists somewhere else is wasted effort. Z39.50 and SRU searches against other libraries' catalogs have done this job for decades. What an AI cataloging assistant changes is not the idea — it is where the first draft comes from and how much of the typing survives into the final record.
The old way
- Search a Z39.50 or SRU target for the title, or type it in from scratch if nothing matches.
- Pick the best match from a results list, which sometimes means opening two or three candidates to compare.
- Check the fields that matter — title, author, ISBN, publisher, edition — against the physical item in hand.
- Fill in anything missing, fix anything wrong, and add your own holdings information.
This is a fine process, and it is why copy cataloging exists at all — but it still means a librarian doing the search, the comparing and the typing, one title at a time.
With an AI assistant drafting first
- Give it the ISBN and ask it to draft the record.
- It queries Google Books and Open Library and fills in what it finds — title, author, publisher, edition, subjects where available.
- You review the draft against the physical item, the same check you would do with any copy-cataloged record.
- Confirm it to commit, or correct a field first and then confirm.
The searching and the first-draft typing move to the assistant. The checking does not go anywhere — and it should not. Two sources agreeing on a title's metadata is not the same as a librarian looking at the actual book in their hands and confirming the edition matches, especially for anything with more than one printing or a regional variant.
Where it saves real time
- Well-documented titles — recent trade publishing, popular fiction and non-fiction — where Google Books and Open Library both carry solid records. This is the case that used to take a few minutes and now takes under one.
- Batches of new acquisitions arriving with ISBNs already on the packing slip, where the same drafting step repeats title after title.
Where it does not help much — and says so
- Older, regional, or self-published titles that are not in either source. The assistant reports that it found nothing rather than guessing at fields, and you catalog it the ordinary way.
- Anything needing specialist subject expertise — a detailed local-history or archival item is still a cataloger's call, not a metadata lookup's.
- Classifying a book whose subject is too broad. The assistant suggests an author mark and a DDC number from fixed cataloging rules — and the catalog health check finds the records still missing one — but a subject as broad as "literature" gives the rules little to go on. Check those suggestions closely before you confirm.
What this is not
It is not WorldCat, and it does not claim to be — the two sources behind it are Google Books and Open Library specifically, which is worth knowing if your workflow depends on a WorldCat-only record for something more obscure. And it is not unattended: every draft is a proposal, reviewed and confirmed by a person, logged the same way a manual edit is.
Curious what it would find for your own new-acquisitions list? See the full AI cataloging assistant page, or read the knowledge-base walkthrough for the exact steps.