History of cataloguing

I am reading the article by Taylor, and am finding it fascinating! Throw in a bit of history and I'm hooked. I think I'm actually enjoying myself at the moment, which is lovely.

I have seen the acronym AACR2 thrown about a bit, and have not known what is is. I now know it to stand for Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd edition (Taylor, 2004, p. 58). I decided to put that here in case I forget what it is and need to know in the future. I almost wrote a note, or put a post it on the wall, but I am not sure how important it will be and realised another aspect of the beauty of blogging - it's here when I need it, but not looking messy, and not in the way if I don't need it anymore. Add to that the easy access by labelling my post and we have another reminder of the wonders of technology and what it means for us in regards to retrieval of information.

Reference:
Taylor, A. (2004). Development of the organization of recorded information in
western civilization. In The organization of information (2nd Ed.) (pp.
49-66). Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited.

Time

Section 1.8 of the readings discusses the fact that as teacher librarians we need to balance what we do. We have important roles supporting teachers and students, teaching information literacy, and cooperative planning; the organisation of our resources, and effective cataloguing are important to make these things as effective as possible and to save time whilst doing them, but we need to make sure that we are saving time overall - so spending more time cataloguing than we are saving elsewhere is not sensible use of time. It is better to not have a perfect library with perfectly catalogued resources, as long as it is still an effective one and the important roles of the teacher librarian can be carried out effectively as well.

This resonates heavily with the perfectionist within me, and I suspect that I will need to remind myself of this important detail in the future.

Cutter's objectives of a catalogue, rewritten for today

To enable a person to find a resource of which either:
- the author
- the title
- the subject
is known.

To show what the library has access to
- by a given author
- on a given subject
- in a given text type/format
- in a given series

To assist in the choice of a resource
- as to its edition (bibliographically)
- as to its character (literary or topical)
- as to its reliability

"resource" and "access to" indicate that we are no longer just dealing with print resources, but digital ones, many of which are online.

Based on the objectives by Cutter 1904, p. 12, cited in Hider, 2008, p. 10.

Summarising the quote by Hensen (2001), information is starting to be classified by its content and substance, rather than where it is stored, and this is how it should be. Well, I agree with this to an extent. I think as far as retrieving items there is still a place for sorting by author in regards to fiction items, not just because it works, but because it means if you find one text that you like, you can then immediately find others by the same author. But as far as sorting digital items, it makes sense to do it this way, as it can be retrieved without going somewhere in particular to find it. The way non-fiction print texts are currently classified (Dewey Decimal system) does this to an extent, but each item has to be allocated to one particular section, even if it has elements that fit within others (although it must be noted, other elements of the text can still come up in the search). Digital resources do not have this problem. I do believe that we have done the best we can with the things we have over the years, and this method of classification would not have been viable before the digital age.

References:

Steven L. Hensen … in a post to the Diglib online discussion list. Quote of the Month, American Libraries, 32 (1, Jan 2001): 86.

Hider, P (with Harvey, R) 2008, Organising knowledge in a global society, rev. edn. Wagga Wagga, NSW: Centre for Information Studies.

Library vs Internet

If a search of a library catalogue is more likely to produce information that is more reliable (i.e. we know its source, it is seen as being created by people who are qualified) and appropriate, then why are we turning to the Internet more and more?


cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by Ѕolo

Perhaps because of:
The myriad of information
How responsive it is to the language we use - we do not need to speak the lingo of a cataloguer
Its accessibility
The instantaneous results (depending on the Internet connection of course) - you don't then have to go and find the information source after looking up its location.

There are many reasons, and I have a feeling the Internet is only going to get better at clarifying which sources are reliable, so that it competes with libraries even more - but these improvements will perhaps involve some cataloguing techniques.

I wonder what all this means for libraries in the long term? I can't imagine a world without libraries, but then I couldn't imagine a world without Angus and Robertson stores 6 months ago...