Page 185 - DLIS002_KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION CLASSIFICATION AND CATALOGUING THEORY

Knowledge Organization: Classification and Cataloguing Theory

Notes Libraries were treated as mere depositories for a long time where books were mainly kept for
preservation. The Catalogues were made so as:

To serve as inventory of library, and
Listing its holdings.
The catalogue comprised of the title-a-line category, where books were named in the assenting
order. According to accession order, books on the shelves were also staged. Both the arrangements
were parallel. In the next phase of development, the library started to be treated as a service
institution. Gradually, the preservation idea started to be substituted by the service spirit. Title-
a-line entries commenced to be ordered in the alphabetical manner which is based on the
authors’ names. In the following phase of development the importance of the subject approach
of the users started to be made. In order to take care of the subject approach, the single alphabetical
order was substituted by as numerous sequences as the number of broad classes into which the
universe of subjects was fractioned so that one sequence must match to one broad class. Perhaps
this was succeeded by adoption of the shelf register approach. Shelf register must sustain in the
catalogue cards form, along with the lists cards which are in an order that are parallel to
arrangement of books on the shelf. Therefore, the title-a-line entries were named in an order
which is parallel to the order of the books on the shelf. The next phase led to the dictionary
catalogue development, comprising of entries of several forms that are ordered in a single
sequence, and thus satisfy the several approaches, comprising the subject approach. The next
phase of development of the library catalogue, according to Dr. Ranganathan, led to the catalogue
division into two forms which are on the basis of the divergences of function.

!
Caution One part comprises number entries that are ordered by number as well as the
second part comprises of word entries which are arranged alphabetically such as a
dictionary.
Closely related to the physical forms is the inner foul’ a library catalogue, which determines the
qualitative functions of the catalogue. The inner for of a library catalogue refers to the
arrangement of catalogue entries in a logical and systematic order to fall into a helpful sequence
for storage and retrieval.
The cataloguing process comprises two operations. The first is the creation of varieties entries
for documents acquired by a library. The second is the organisation of these entries in a logical
and helpful order for storage and retrieval.

In this section, we are concerned only with the file organisation of catalogue entries. While there
are many ways of arranging these entries in a helpful order, the three currently existing systems
are:
Alphabetical files
Classified files
Alphabetico-classed files
Alphabetical catalogue can be separately designed and constructed for authors, titles, names
recording works on and by authors, subjects or all entries of authors, titles, subjects, etc. in one
single alphabetical file, known as the dictionary catalogue. In classified files, the main entries
are arranged according to the class number of the classification scheme chosen for the shelf
organisation of documents in a library. This file is supported by an alphabetical index.

Task With six examples of your own, illustrate how the distributed relatives get collected
in one place in a dictionary catalogue.

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