The catalog is now also available as a CD-ROM for purchase from distribution centres of the LDS Church. When I wrote the book, it was necessary to enter both the surname and the forenames of an author. This has been changed - you can enter a surname and get a list of authors with that surname, then you can choose them individually to see the titles and details of the books. This has changed, so the message is sent to list members with the subject you provided. Outside FamilySearch, there are thousands of email lists and newsgroups for genealogy.
Popular lists have thousands of subscribers, and hundreds of messages per day.
There are lists for geographical areas - usually one for each country and county, lists for special interests, lists for users of particular genealogy computer software, lists for members of family history societies. The implication of this is that after reading into a genealogy package like Family Tree Maker, source records will have LDS library call numbers, not a description of the source.