Page 158 - DLIS002_KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION CLASSIFICATION AND CATALOGUING THEORY

Unit 8: Library Cataloguing

Earliest known form of library catalogue indicates that it was compiled to serve as a simple Notes
inventory or list of library resources. Thus, Pinakes was the first great library catalogue of
western civilization, just as the Bible of Gutenberg was the first great printed book. The foregoing
examples of catalogues of the early and medieval Libraries tend to indicate that the catalogue
was more of a record for the keeper or custodian of the books than one for the public.
A modern library catalogue displays the record of a library’s resources with a view to make
them easily accessible for study and reference; serves as a dependable tool of communication of
ideas and subjects dealt with in the books to the readers who use the library.

Did u know? Recent trend of computerization of library catalogue for developing Online
Public Access Catalogue (OPAC) had faced maximum problems because of varied types of
rules followed by different libraries. Introducing standard codes of cataloguing like ISBD,
AACR II, etc., further solved these problems.

Self Assessment

State whether the following statements are true or false:

1. Library catalogue is an essential and important tool for any library.
2. Library catalogues is not different from the publishers’ catalogues.

8.2 History of Library Cataloguing

The custodial responsibility assumed by the libraries of the early stages obligated on them the
functions of acquisition and conservation entailing also the use of some system of bibliographic
control so that the items on the store could be located and retrieved.

8.2.1 Early Stage – Evolution of Catalogue – Library Catalogue Code

Some such methods though primitive, existed almost until the time the manuscripts came to end
and ceased to be the primary vehicles of communication. The discovery of Assyro-Babylonian
clay tablets, the wall inscriptions at Edfu and the extant remnants of the papyrus rolls of the
Egyptian, Greek and Roman civilizations testify this fact. The catalogues and the materials they
listed, both were in primal forms (clay tablets, inscriptions and papyrus rolls). From the
archaeological finds of the Assyro-Babylonian clay tablets (1668–626 B.C.), the antiquity of the
library catalogue can be easily placed around 2000 B.C. These tablets were similar to press
guides with bibliographic data, such as title (occasionally, with opening words), number of
tablets constituting a work, number of lines on a tablet, distinct subdivisions and location marks
inscribed on them. They served as simple location devices. However, all such primal forms
were not verily catalogues.

Notes This system with no change continued to exist well into the first seven centuries of
the Christian era.
The fall of the Roman Empire in the 6th century brought about a deliberate destruction and
dispersal of the hitherto great collections of the private, public and temple libraries. The
emergence of Christianity as the state religion in the 3rd century having already dealt a severe
blow, the temple libraries began to disintegrate. Their place was now taken by the monastic

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