Brief Review of Cataloging

The purpose of this section is to serve as a brief review of the information in a cataloging record.  More complete explanations of all of these areas of cataloging are given in the Technical Services section of the ABLE courses.  It is recommended that you review these courses before going through this special course on cataloging music CD’s if you do not deal with cataloging information on a regular basis.

Each cataloging record, whether displayed on a computer or on a card, contains basic information that is required as a part of standards established for consistency in cataloging.  The purpose of cataloging is in part to create a unique description of each item in a library’s collection.  This is done in several sections that are reviewed below. 

The first section of information is usually the descriptive section.  This includes information on:

• the title

• the format of the item

• the person (s) responsible for creating the information

• the edition

• information about the publisher and the date of publication

• a physical description of the item

• information about any series that the item is a part of

• necessary notes that further describe the item. 

Particular types of punctuation are used to separate the parts of this descriptive information, so that each type of information can be clearly read and will not be confused with other areas.  Whether the record is on a computer or on cards, this descriptive information should be consistent.

In looking at the computer record below, from the Library of Congress (LC) database, the author, title and format appear near the top of the record.  The title, Spiderweb for two, has a subtitle, a Melendy maze.  This is followed by the author, Elizabeth Enright.  Next comes the publication information, which indicates that the publisher is Holt and the date is 2002.  The location of the publisher is given as New York.  The next area shown is the physical description, which indicates that this is a book that is 207 pages long, it has illustrations, and is 22 cm. tall.  This item does not have an edition statement, so that area is omitted.  There is a series, but it is listed in the notes area, indicating that there was some question about it being an actual series, or just a set of books that go together.

Several notes are included in this cataloging record, not necessarily to further describe the item physically, but to indicate further details that might be helpful in identifying the item, or information of interest to someone looking for this book.  The ISBN number assigned to this item is included, as well as a summary of the story and information about the series of related stories of which this is a part.  There are two categories of notes, formal and informal.  Formal notes are those always done in a particular style, often with punctuation that divides titles or performers or other pieces of information.  Informal notes are any notes that the cataloger felt might be useful to include, either for the library staff looking at the record, or for the patron accessing the item.  The notes in this record fall into both categories.  The series information is an informal note, and the ISBN number and summary are formal ones.  A complete listing of the types of notes that can be used is available in a cataloging rule book such as The Concise AACR2 : 1998 Revision by Michael Gorman, 1999.  A basic cataloging rule book should be a part of the collection of any library that catalogs non-book materials.

This is how the above record might look when typed in a catalog card format:

An area of access points is another important feature of a cataloging record.  This includes things like the subject headings assigned to an item, the names of those who created the item, the title and series belonging to the item, and in computer catalogs, keywords.  Access points are any places where the catalog user can locate, or get access to, this cataloging record.

In a computer catalog, many of the access points are pre-set by the parameters of the cataloging program being used.  These may be chosen by the library using the catalog, or limits built into the cataloging system by the programmers.  In a card catalog, access points are listed at the bottom of the cataloging record, showing the additional cards that were placed alphabetically in the catalog.

In a card catalog format, and sometimes in a computer format, the first access point usually seen in the record is the subject heading.  Subject headings are not just made up by the cataloger.  These are standardized descriptive words or phrases that help the user determine the content, or subject, of the item being cataloged.  Most libraries use either the ‘Sears List of Subject Headings’ or the ‘Library of Congress Subject Headings’ as their guide in this process.  In the record above, one subject heading is FAMILY LIFE—FICTION, indicating that the book is about family life, but is fictional treatment of that topic.  Another subject heading is MYSTERY AND DETECTIVE STORIES, indicating the type of story category into which this book falls.  Subject headings are covered in more detail in the subject heading section of the ABLE course on Technical Services.  There can be many subject headings assigned to a cataloging record.  The purpose is to describe the content of the information an item contains, so if more than one word or phrase is needed, this is acceptable.  With card catalog records, an additional card, or sometimes more than one card, must be typed up for each subject heading assigned to that item, so catalogers have traditionally tried to use 1-3 subject headings to keep from having to type up too many cards.  With computer catalogs, this restriction is eliminated, as the information is only entered into the computer once, and then the program makes the necessary connections between subject headings and computer records.  If used carefully, this opens up the possibility of many subject headings for one record, creating broader access to the information in a library collection

The next step in determining access points is to decide on the main entry.  This process was explained in the basic ABLE course on Technical Services, but as a reminder, the main entry is usually the author of a work, unless too many persons are responsible for its creation.  The main entry can also sometimes be the name of a group, business, corporation, or government body.  The guidelines for this determination are laid out in the cataloging rules book mentioned above.

In this example, the main entry is under author, indicating that there was no question about whether or not a person was responsible for the creation of this book.  This is very common with books, as there is usually one person or a group clearly listed as creating the work.  With some book materials, though, and many non-book materials, authorship is not so easy to determine.  Sometimes there are too many authors listed, so authorship is considered to be too spread out to give one person precedence over the others.  And with many non-book items, there may be no clear author.  When there is any question about authorship, the item is put under a title main entry.  Main entry is really only an issue when doing cards for a card catalog.  The format of the information on the card changes slightly when the main entry is under title.  For computer catalog records, the main entry is indicated if MARC format is used, but many input screens for basic computer catalogs do not request the type of entry.  For MARC records, the coding used to indicate the type of entry will impact the automatic access points made by the computer program.  Here is the MARC record for the example shown above:

In this example, the title and author information has a field code of 245, but just above that in field 100 is the author, indicating that this is an author main entry.  Information about the other MARC fields can be found in the MARC section of the ABLE Technical Services course.

Once the decision is made about the main entry, the choice of other needed access points is usually fairly clear.  If an item had a title main entry, access is needed for any persons or groups responsible for the creation or performance.  Access will also be needed for any additional titles, as in the case of a sound recording with more than one piece of music on the recording.  If there is a series that the item belongs to, this is often listed as an access point in the record, also.

For an item that is an author main entry, the same types of access points are needed, with the adjustment of leaving out the name that has been chosen as the author (the main entry card already provides that access point) and adding an access point for the title of the item.  There might still be a need for access to additional persons or titles, as well as series in this record.  In the example above, there is an access point indicating the title, and another indicating the series.  The words ‘Title’ and ‘Series’ were used to indicate these access points.  When creating the cards needed to file in the catalog, the actual titles of the book and the series would be typed at the top of the card.

The last element connected with the basic cataloging record is the Call Number.  For non-fiction items, this is usually made up of a classification number from either the Library of Congress or Dewey classification schedules, an author number, and sometimes the date.  If the item is not a book, the first line of the call number may be a word or abbreviation indicating the format of the item.  For fiction materials, the call number can vary quite a bit—some libraries prefer all or part of the author’s last name, or they may use an author number instead.  The date may or may not be used for fiction materials, but again, a word or abbreviation indicating the format should be used for non-book materials.

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