It is taken for granted that any solution to the problem of manuscript cataloguing must be based on an automated approach. This ought to form the basis for linking the various manuscript collections thereby permitting a cooperative approach to cataloguing. If these technologies can be viewed as standard, we believe that there are two more advanced technologies worthy of investigation. The first is expert systems. The final comment is not directly related to cataloguing.
Manuscripts are rare and valuable items that can only be consulted in one place.
Consideration ought t o be given to storing images of the manuscripts, possibly on CD-ROMs, and using this as a distribution mechanism to make the manuscripts more widely accessible to the international academic community . This would be an ambitious undertaking and we do not underestimate the problems though we can be certain the technical problems will be the least difficult to solve. Thus the long term objective ou ght to be nothing less than both a machine-readable catalogue for manuscripts and digitized versions of those manuscripts. As indicated in the title of the paper, it is clear that the only viable solution involves cooperation between the major manuscript collections in the creation of a union catalogue. It is reasonable to plan this on the basis of a machine readable catalogue.