Page 99 - DLIS006_INFORMATION SOURCES AND SERVICES

Information Sources and Services

Notes (b) Descriptive Bibliography: Descriptive bibliography is the application of analytical
bibliography to the external form of the book i.e. it concern itself with the materials forms
of books and not with their literary contexts. “Its function is primarily that of recording
the bibliography details of the book which has been established during the process of
analytical bibliography.” In Descriptive bibliography the bibliograph details are kept to
minimum because the basic purpose to listing. Descriptive bibliography aims to describe
all variation from this ideal form. But due to standardization of books production the
importance of descriptive bibliography has decreased greatly.
(c) Textual Bibliography: It is an application of analytical bibliography to the contexts of
books. It is a bibliography applied to textual studies. The main purpose of such a
bibliography is to determine the effect of writing or the printing process on the correctness
or completeness of a text. It helps ascertain the variety of authorship edition etc. thus
textual variation between a manuscript and the printed books or between various reprints
or edition. So the textual bibliography is more interested in the author’s wards and tries to
determine the exact words that the author intended should constitute his work. The aim is
to prepare definite edition of the original author. We can say therefore the textual
bibliography is an area which seems to be of great importance for literary critics rather
than librarians or bibliographies.
(d) Historical Bibliography: The study of books “as object of art” may be termed a historical
bibliography. It is concerned with art of writing, printing, illumination and binding. The
historical bibliography makes an attempt to achieve a broad understanding of the milieu
of the book in the context of the world of books, and social and cultural conditions in
existence at the time because the significance of books is very great in every phase of
civilization and of life. Historical bibliography has to content itself with the evolution of
typefaces from its very early manuscripts origin. Then again the very material of which
the book is compared paper as we know it, from its handmade stage to that of machine
manufactured.
(e) Systematic Bibliography: Systematic bibliography is nothing but the listing of books and
other reading material according to some useful system of reference scheme. According to
Arundell Esdaile “to assemble the resulting entries, simple or elaborate as the case may
required into logical and useful arrangement for reference and study” is called systematic
bibliography. Esdale in his “student’s manual of bibliography” has divided bibliography
into two categories namely primary and secondary.
(a) Primary Bibliography: Primary bibliographies are those which are the original record
of the whole or part of their content.
(i) General or Universal Bibliography: In general or universal bibliography, it
attempts to include books published in every country and age and on all
subject. It is a survey of all records of civilization in all fields of knowledge for
whatever the time, place, language, subject or author. It does not matter. In
fact there is no universal bibliography as such but the publish catalogue of
great libraries of the world can be stated to be the nearest approaches to this
type of bibliography.

Example: Library of Congress Catalogue of Books., British Museum General Catalogue
of printed books.
Also Konard Gesner, the father of bibliography attempts to list all scholarly
publication in the world which appears in 1545, under the title “Bibliotheca
Universalis”

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