Page 34 - DLIS102_LIBRARY_AND_ITS_USERS

Unit 5: Library Catalogues

• Title catalog: a formal catalog, sorted alphabetically according to the title of the entries. Notes
• Dictionary catalog: a catalog in which all entries (author, title, subject, series) are interfiled in
a single alphabetical order. This was the primary form of card catalog in North American
libraries just prior to the introduction of the computer-based catalog.
• Keyword catalog: a subject catalog, sorted alphabetically according to some system of key-
words.
• Mixed alphabetic catalog forms: sometimes, one finds a mixed author/title, or an author/
title/keyword catalog.
• Systematic catalog: a subject catalog, sorted according to some systematic subdivision of sub-
jects. Also called a classified catalog.
• Shelf list catalog: a formal catalog with entries sorted in the same order as bibliographic
items are shelved. This catalog may also serve as the primary inventory for the library.
Library catalogs originated as manuscript lists, arranged by format (folio, quarto, etc.) or in a rough
alphabetical arrangement by author. Printed catalogs, sometimes called dictionary catalogs enabled
scholars outside a library to gain an idea of its contents. These would sometimes be interleaved
with blank leaves on which additions could be recorded, or bound as guard books in which slips of
paper were bound in for new entries. Slips could also be kept loose in cardboard or tin boxes, stored
on shelves. The first card catalogs appeared in the nineteenth century, enabling much more flexibility,
and towards the end of the twentieth century the OPAC was developed.
• c. 245 BC: Callimachus is considered the first bibliographer and is the one that organized the
library by authors and subjects. The Pinakes was the first ever library catalogue. Variations
on this system were used in libraries until the late 1800s when Melvil Dewey developed
the Dewey Decimal Classification in 1876, which is still in use today.
• c. 800: Library catalogues are introduced in the House of Wisdom and other medieval
Islamic libraries where books are organized into specific genres and categories.
• 1595: Nomenclator of Leiden University Library appears the first printed catalog of an insti-
tutional library.
• 1674: Thomas Hyde’s catalog for the Bodleian Library.
More about the early history of library catalogs has been collected in 1956 by Strout.

Self Assessment

Fill in the blanks:
1. ...... made the first explicit statement regarding the objectives of a bibliographic system in
his Rules for a Printed Dictionary Catalog in 1876.
2. ...... is considered the first bibliographer and is the one that organized the library by authors
and subjects.

3. ...... appears the first printed catalog of an institutional library.

Cataloging Rules

Cataloging (or cataloguing) rules have been defined to allow for consistent cataloging of various
library materials across several persons of a cataloging team and across time. Users can use them to
clarify how to find an entry and how to interpret the data in an entry. Cataloging rules prescribe →

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