Yes.
Only a quick google search away.
For some reason Farnell (which is part of element14) doesn't have a catalogue. Or I can't find it... I really need to give them a ring tomorrow because a lot of things are much easier to find in a paper catalogue.
I completely agree - at least for most companies. It shouldn't be too difficult to make a good web catalog, but many companies simply don't manage.
For example: in a paper catalog all items are sorted just by one category, e.g. chips or transistors by their part number. On a web site you can implement (and many try to) parametric searches and tables - but these simply su** most of the time.
A perfect example how not to make a web catalog is the Swedish branch of Conrad (
http://www.conrad.se). Here there is absolutely no sorting, whatsoever. If you find the section on through-the-hole LEDs for example you are presented by 5 pages of products, 102 items per page, which are not sorted by color, diameter, intensity, manufacturer or anything. Actually you can sort these by "product title", price (not a piece, but total price) and manufacturer.
Every Chinese seller on eBay has a more structured approach.
At Uppsala university we tend to keep paper copies of the local distributor Elfa's catalogs from a few years back as resources in our labs. They contained very detailed specs, pinouts of all digital logic chips (74xx and 40xx), many controllers, transistor comparisons etc. And it came in a hardcover book. Nowadays they still print a catalog, but it is about as chaotic as their website - which is still one of the better ones.