Page 247 - DLIS006_INFORMATION SOURCES AND SERVICES

Information Sources and Services

Notes and Republic of Ireland that are received by the British Library under legal deposit as provided
for in various Acts of Parliament. It also includes information on forthcoming titles supplied
under the British Library’s Cataloguing-in-Publication Programme. The British National
Bibliography (BNB) lists the books and new journal titles published or distributed in the United
Kingdom and Ireland since 1950. It also lists forthcoming book titles and hand-held electronic
publications e.g. CD-ROMs, deposited with the Legal Deposit Office since 2003.
The BNB was established in 1949 in response to the recommendations of Lionel McColvin who
had undertaken a survey of the UK’s public library service in 1942 which resulted in the McColvin
Report. McColvin concluded that it was inefficient for libraries to produce their own catalogues
and that where catalogues did exist they only provided brief descriptions of library holdings
rather than all available books of potential interest to users. McColvin identified a requirement
for a detailed weekly list of bibliographic descriptions for new books which could be used by
libraries to develop their catalogues by cutting and pasting the printed entries on to their
catalogue cards.
The Council of the British National Bibliography was established in March 1949 and the new
national bibliography commenced full operations in 1950. It consisted of weekly lists of all
books and first issues of new serial titles published in Great Britain catalogued in accordance
with the Anglo-American Code and classified according to the Dewey decimal classification
system. Author/title indexes were provided every four weeks and the lists were cumulated into
an annual volume.

Did u know? A pilot issue number 0 was produced in December 1949 and issue Number 1
was published on 4 January 1950. It contained just 25 entries.
The British Library took on the responsibility for the production of the BNB following its
foundation in 1973 and still produces a weekly printed version of the BNB together with interim
cumulations and annual volumes. However, the average weekly issue now contains around
3,500 entries in line with the huge increase in publication that has occurred over the last 60 years.
This period has also seen numerous other developments for the BNB resulting in a database of
over 3 million bibliographic records.
Coverage of the BNB has always been selective; the emphasis being on titles available via
normal book buying channels. A weekly BNB data service began in January 1969 using the
(then) innovative combination of the new UKMARC bibliographic data and ISO2709 MARC
record exchange formats with magnetic computer tape. BNB MARC records were first made
available online in 1977 with the introduction of BLAISE, the British Library Automated
Information Service. Distribution of BNB records via FTP began in 1998 and eventually replaced
the tape service and the Library moved to the MARC21 format in 2004.
Following a pilot CD-ROM produced in co-operation with the Biblothèque Nationale in 1988,
BNB on CD-ROM was launched in 1989. It originally consisted of a two-disc backfile covering
the period 1950 to 1985 and a single disc current subscription service covering records created
from 1986 updated quarterly. A new MS Windows version of the BNB on CD-ROM was produced
in 1996 by which time current file discs were updated monthly and the backfile had been
compressed on to a single disc. Production of BNB on CD-ROM ceased in December 2008 when
the database became available for searching on the British Library’s Integrated Catalogue as a
subset search.
The British Library coordinates the UK Cataloguing in Publication (CIP) Programme and has
included advance notification publication records in the BNB since the 1980s. Information on
new titles appears up to 16 weeks ahead of the announced publication date. Advance information
on over 60,000 titles each year is provided in this way via the BNB.

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