About
Katlog is a prototype library system: a catalogue for readers, requests, circulation and a librarian workspace. It grew out of a single question to an AI: can the data of an open Aleph catalogue be taken and prepared for a new application?
This journal is the experiment’s open diary. I write about how decisions are made, where things go wrong and how they are fixed, what the data shows and what could come next. I write for librarians and for anyone interested in how AI is changing everyday professional work.
Good to know
- Katlog is a private, non-commercial project. It is not an official project of the Max Planck Society, the Max-Planck-Haus library or any institute, and does not represent their views.
- The project uses only publicly available bibliographic data from the open catalogue.
- No real readers take part in the experiment. All accounts and names in the screenshots are test data and fictitious.
- The journal’s texts are prepared with the help of an AI assistant and edited by the author.
Who “we” are
Most articles say “we”. That means the author and the AI assistant with whom he is building the system and writing the journal. Articles in the first person are the author’s personal columns. Decisions about the collection, rules and cataloguing are made by the author.
How the journal is organised
The articles are grouped into sections and arranged in reading order: from the first link to the old catalogue to the glossary. Each article has its own call number, like a book in a catalogue. The images are real screenshots of the prototype and the demo system.
About this English edition
The journal was originally written in Russian. This English edition was added at the request of colleagues abroad; the content is the same.