That inertia is indeed huge. For example, if your library uses RFID but also shares a catalog and their books with other libraries, they'll still need barcode labels (with the same number that's encoded on the tag) so that the other libraries can deal with the items. Barcode scanners are ubiquitous in libraries; RFID readers, not so much.
Also, one of the promises of RFID for libraries has not panned out very cleanly. When a library does an inventory, not only do they want to verify the existence of the books, but that they are _in order_ on the shelf. RFID vendors for libraries promised that you could do this "shelfreading" accurately just by passing the wand across each shelf, but for various reasons the results are imperfect enough that it's not a clear winner over doing it with a barcode scanner. Given the fact that RFID tags have historically been far more expensive than barcode labels, the economics don't pencil out for many libraries to switch to RFID.
So many of these "technological solutions" end up being "spherical cow" type things.
RFID might speed up checkout at a library by a small fraction, but you still have the issue that most patrons check out a book or two, you still have to check that the DVD is in the case either way, and the self-checkouts aren't backing up anyway.
(Similarly most libraries have given up on fines, at least around here - the overhead of dealing with them and "scaring" patrons away was much worse than the people actively "stealing" books.)
Not to even get to barcodes (like CVS files) are quite interoperable, and you can relatively easily change one barcode system to another, just my importing the data. RFID readers often need specific RFID tags and it locks you to a vendor (who often promptly goes out of business). Over time things like that get noticed.
Fun fact: the MARC format, used for bibliographic metadata by the majority of libraries that have digital catalogs, included supporting the printing of catalog cards as one of its use cases [1]. To this day a properly maintained library catalog based on MARC could, with some effort, be used to generate an equivalent set of printed catalog cards.
However, printed catalog cards as a backup to the digital catalog have practical problems. For one thing, they are heavy. A full card catalog of a large public library could easily weigh tons [2] and take up space that would be better used for other functions. For another thing, the expense would detract from other library services, and many libraries already suffer from budgetary challenges.
A proper backup strategy is the way with the risk of losing the digital catalog. Besides, libraries have more fundamental problems to deal with regarding the permanence of electronic resources. For example, the fact that libraries largely do not and cannot _own_ the ebooks they circulate causes numerous problems.
Dunno about Oklahoma, but Kennesaw, Georgia, does have a gun ownership requirement, passed in 1982 in response to Morton Grove, Illinois, banning handguns. Kennesaw's neighbor, Acworth, is the one with the rake ownership requirement -- passed in response to Kenneswaw's gun law -- though it is not immediately clear to me whether that ordinance is still in effect.
Kennesaw's law allowed for conscientious objection and had no penalty for non compliance so it was effectively dead when passed but did make quite the splash in the international press. Crime rates in Kennesaw did drop significantly after the law was passed but the same was true for surrounding communities without the law, most likely due to them becoming affluent bedroom communities for Atlanta's white collar class.
Depending on what you're looking for, a _lot_ more is being published by the Library of Congress as Linked Data nowadays, including LoC classification and subject headings. Check out https://id.loc.gov/.
https://id.loc.gov/download/ offers bulk downloads of many of the vocabularies, including the subject headings. In addition, individual records of various types can be search for.
That seems to have Subject Headings, but not the Classification, unless I'm blind (a fairly high likelihood).
I've spent quite some time poking around the LoC website over the years without finding anything more accessible than the PDFs of the Library of Congress Classification. Are you aware of that being generally available?
Near as I can tell, the best that's available is starting with the class(es) you want (e.g., https://id.loc.gov/authorities/classification/H.html for social sciences) and crawling recursively to grab whatever serialization of the RDF you want to consume. There's no SPARQL endpoint for id.loc.gov, alas, but it beats resorting to the PDFs.
I know a bit about Henriette Avram and her work at LoC developing MARC, but it of course makes sense that other libraries were thinking along similar lines at the time.
It's not a LibraryThing or GoodReads; it's meant for libraries that are institutions. That said, I don't think there is anything stopping an individual person signing up and entering their collection, but there would be no point in paying the fees unless you had (say) a unique scholarly collection and wanted to lend books to other libraries - and if so, in the long run you'd likely be better off seeing if a library wanted to acquire your collection.
The International ISBN Agency coordinates assigning ISBN ranges to national agencies, who in turn will assign subranges to publishers. The publishers in turn assign specific numbers to their own works. However, the international agency does not itself maintain a universal database of assigned ISBNs - the most it operates is a global database of publishers and their assigned ranges. And since it's the publishers who are assigning numbers from their allocations, various errors can crop up, including reusing ISBNs for different works and failing to issue distinct ISBNs for different formats. (For example, if you publish hardcover, paperbook, and ebook versions of a book, you should assign three ISBNs. That rule is not always observed.)
Also, libraries hold many books that long predate ISBNs; it wasn't until 1965 that the immediate predecessor of the ISBN, the SBN, was a twinkle in a bookseller's eye.
And while in most countries you can't properly publish a book without an ISBN (ie, have it sold in bookshops), you can publish a Kindle book without it (if you opt to only offer the ebook).
That leaves a huge part of publications completely out of the system. Kindle-only books are on Amazon servers and nowhere else.
>while in most countries you can't properly publish a book without an ISBN (ie, have it sold in bookshops)
I'm quite skeptical of this, given the amount of books I've personally seen published in recent decades without ISBNs, along with the limited & haphazard attempts to regulate what it means to 'publish' something or even to be a 'proper' bookseller. But if you have some experience I don't with this, I'm interested in hearing about it.
bookstores don't want to carry a book without an isbn because no isbn means it's not available to purchase from their distributor and it's easiest for a store to order through real distribution channels (like ingram in the u.s.).
but most stores carry a small amount of self-published books and sometimes those books have no isbn. those books are typically by local writers. but in my experience as a bookseller, self published books are a pain to work with. some self-published books aren't returnable, but returns are an important part of the bookstore business since a lot of books don't sell. working with a lot writers individually about ordering etc is more involved than going through a single distributor, this takes a lot of time for whoever has to do this.
> given the amount of books I've personally seen published in recent decades without ISBNs
i'd bet this on amazon? iirc, you can't always return self-published amazon books. i think the author decides this, bc they get charged a processing fee for returns.
> or even to be a 'proper' bookseller
you can totally sell your collection online without any isbns and you'd be considered a bookseller. you'll just need an sku system. there's a difference between a used/collectible seller and a bookseller who carries new books as well as used/collectibles. the new books require proper distribution channels.
