Page 160 - DLIS002_KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION CLASSIFICATION AND CATALOGUING THEORY

Unit 8: Library Cataloguing

catalogue issued under the guidance of Thomas Hyde in 1674 marked further improvement. Notes
It continued the alphabetical order and other procedures as in the earlier catalogues but provided
better assemblage of literary units. The preface contained rules which remained authoritative
until the middle of the 19th century.
The next century i.e., 18th century was rather a period of stabilization than innovation or solution.
Libraries, more importantly the university and private collections grew in size without definite
improvements in organisation. The spread of ideas was slow. Only the printed catalogues did
serve the purpose but in a limited way; as examples. But most of them were influenced by the
early bibliographers who were immature and were not concerned with logic or theory.

8.2.4 Modern Catalogue (1900 A.D.)

The 19th century was an age of great many codes: Catalogue was considered a finding list with
the Bodleian concept of literary unit occasionally given expression in compilations. There ensued
a spate of debates on the relative merits of author, dictionary, classed and alphabetio-classed
catalogues. Author (under surname) and title (for anonymous work) entries constituted the
author catalogue. From this author catalogue did develop the dictionary catalogue. It consisted
of duplicate entries under authors, titles, subjects and forms.

Example: The catalogue of the printed hooks of the Society of Antiquaries of London
(1816), supposed as the first true dictionary catalogue, employed duplicate entry approach in
one single alphabetical file. Classed catalogue was limited to subject arrangement in systematic
order by grouping related subjects together or in proximity. As the purpose of the catalogue
became better clarified, the classed catalogue gained importance. It applied the systems of
classification schemes devised by Bacon, Horne, Brunet and others. The alphabetico-classed
catalogue too became popular during the middle of the century. It was rather an amalgam of
dictionary and classed catalogue.

The first half of the century was, thus, characterised by a variety of combinations of arrangements
and indexes, broadly divisible into two categories. The first category constituted lists arranged
in subject or classed order, i.e., broad subjects or classes in shelf list order with works
sub-arranged according to accession and chronologically by imprint date, title or author. The
second category consisted of alphabetically arranged indexes to classified file which was not a
systematic one.
The supplementary alphabetical subject indexes created the need for standard lists of subject
headings as aids. Since the practice of picking up subject words from the title lacked uniformity
and made syndetic structure difficult, adoption of a better system specially needed for construction
of dictionary catalogue was felt. This initiated efforts towards development of standard lists of
subject heading.

Did u know? The ALA published such a list entitled, List of Subject Headings for use in the
dictionary catalogue in 1895.
It was considered as a standard list suitable for all types of libraries and found wide acceptance.
The third and final edition was brought in 1911 when the Library of Congress List of Subject
Headings (issued in 3 parts between 1909 and 1913) replaced it. Besides these two, three other
publications viz., Poole’s Index to Periodicals Literature, the ALA Index (an index for collections
and composite works), and the Catalogue of the ALA Library (intended to serve as selection
tool, cataloguing guide and printed catalogue), all published in 1893 (which still continue under
different names and publishers) proved as useful bibliographical tools and influenced cataloguing.

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