How Data Catalogs Expand Discovery and Improve Governance

AI and automation are making it easier for users to find the data they need. Those of us beyond a certain age remember when school research projects began in front of the library card catalog: that now-antique set of wooden cabinets with the long drawers full of well-thumbed cards that adhered to a standard bibliographic system. If you understood that system (or had the help of a good librarian), you could perform a surprising amount of research at a metadata level before having to hunt through the library stacks for the actual books you needed. You could use the system to understand relationships between book topics and perhaps discover an unexpected book that was perfect for your report. Library catalogs, along with an increasing number of pre-digital-age storage systems, have changed.