Actually, the presence of fewer catalogers may be seen as a good thing,
perhaps indicating that it is no longer considered imperative that each
library generate all its own cataloging with its accompanying administrative
empire but rather obtain it from a central service, reducing costs
substantially. This may be leading to everyone cataloging the same way with
minor additions to the record regarding location and other administrative
variants, and thus allow searches to disclose multiple copies countrywide
more easily.
I thought this was what everyone had been working toward over the years.