One of the first jobs I had out of school was transcribing hand-written catalog records for a then-new digital catalog. The big worry (this was well before Goog

One of the first jobs I had out of school was transcribing hand-written catalog records for a then-new digital catalog. The big worry (this was well before Google, Worldcat, etc. existed) in those days was that much of the bibliographic metadata that had accumulated in the card catalog would be lost, because the effort to digitize it all would be too great. The new digital catalog only had a very simplified version. Over time, of course, the systems improved to the point where I don't think even librarians want to go back to the old way.