Web lists and the decline of the library catalog

For many years, catalogs have served as the gateway to library collections; our collections are inaccessible without them. This picture is rapidly changing with the current explosion of online resources. The new gateway is the World Wide Web Should we attempt to accommodate the new resources in the old gateway ? Libraries have struck various balances between what is accessed via their catalog versus their web site, but creating lists of online resources on the Web is always part of the solution. The author points out deficiencies of our catalogs that have led us to this point of creating a parallel "catalog" on our web sites. The author also offers some powerful reasons why focusing access on the Web makes sense now.