With today's announcement by Google, Google checks out Library Books, Jim Michalko has a response, "Welcome the elephant to the room" that addresses how
Since April 2003 RLG has had a cooperative agreement with Google in order to explore the impact of making library materials and bibliographic research information more accessible and visible to the general population of interested students, faculty, and information seekers through deeper connections with the range of Google services. We have discussions in progress regarding the new opportunities presented by the expansion of Google Print that we hope will add to these services' usefulness to the academy.
There's also a sentence that addresses my almost complete focus since April:
RLG 2.0: RLG's massive reengineering process to move all of its applications and databases off the mainframe moves into high gear. RLIN cataloging tools are substantially updated and released as RLIN21™, in a nod to MARC 21. The new hardware and software environment is installed. DB2 designs and processes, successfully explored while creating RedLightGreen, get seriously tested and expanded in the course of creating the new databases for experienced researchers and technical processing staff.
Rather disenheartening to see it in just so many words. But so it goes. Once we get this new DB2 version of the Union Catalog done, we will begin redoing RedLightGreen's database to improve speed and facilitate more elegant connections between editions, tweaks to ranking, all sorts of things i'd like to tweak!