The Austrian National Library’s card image catalog

Abstract

For historical reasons, the Austrian National Library (ANL) had only 10 per cent of its 2.9 million items available in its OPAC as of 1997. Its unique holdings from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries could still only be found via card catalogs. In order to make these unique collections accessible via the Web, the library scanned each catalog card into a digital image. An in‐house software application called KatZoom was used to browse and search the catalog card images. Within less than half a year, ANL’s unique holdings became accessible via the Web. At a later time, these digital images were converted to electronic text and incorporated into the local library systems.