Page 141 - DLIS007_LIBRARY AUTOMATION

Library Automation

Notes of cataloguing. In the card environment, cataloguing depends on a longer process of manual
checking against other catalogues (such as NUC, the National Union Catalogue), the ordering of
card sets and receiving and interfiling them in the catalogue. This process in online catalogues
is done more comprehensively and easily by subscribing to bibliographic utilities or by
purchasing MARC products and downloading the needed records into the library’s automated
system.
MARC records permit a fuller level of description; more data elements to be included in the
description and many more data elements to be assigned as access points for retrieval. A MARC
record also includes other data, including non-bibliographic data that are used for catalogue
maintenance. There is now a trend toward preserving detailed bibliographic records in machine-
readable form. According to Reynolds (1985: 285):

“The amount and type of information that constitute a ‘full bibliographic record’ is certainly
open to debate, but since the late 1960s the accepted standard has been the MARC format. The
data that can be contained in a MARC record include the entire spectrum of information normally
presented on catalogue cards plus a great deal of other potentially valuable categorizing
information that can be encoded in fixed elements and elsewhere on record.”
However, MARC format has been criticised for being an electronic version of the catalogue card
and for its limited accommodation of hierarchically structured information (Gaynor, 1996: p. C).
Systems may differ from one another in the indexing of fields and it is often difficult to find out
what fields are indexed by a given system.

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Caution The results in retrieval and display problems, leading to user confusion.

Bibliographic Standardisation

In comparison to manual systems, the online environment gives much more emphasis to the
concept of standardisation. Although the idea of standardised bibliographic description seems
to have first appeared with derived cataloguing and the sale of Library of Congress cards in 1898
and later with the introduction of the National Union Catalogue (NUC), it was not until the
1970s that the application of computers to library operations and the advent of online catalogues
gave to standardisation a much more significant role. With regard to the description, choice and
form of data elements to be included in a bibliographic record, conformity to standards, e.g.,
cataloguing codes, ISBDs and MARC formats, are vital to online catalogues. Unlike libraries of
two decades ago with their independent card catalogues, libraries of today often create their
own catalogue records according to national and/or international standards for the purposes of
easy communication of and access to bibliographic information. Now, it is common for libraries
of any size to participate in networks. One result of this, as Wajenberg (1992: 105) points out, is
an ever-increasing pressure to conform to national and international standards.
Uniformity and consistency are basic requirements for effective bibliographical control. The
rapid growth of shared cataloguing systems, developments in bibliographic utilities and the
need for bibliographic exchange between databases in the last decade has led to a stronger
reaffirmation of the value of standardisation in bibliographic records. Standardisation helps
bibliographic records to be uniformly created, manipulated, exchanged and retrieved. According
to Weihs and Howarth (1988: 78–79):
“As the cataloguing community moves closer to making the ideal of universal bibliographic
control a reality through local, regional, provincial, national, continental and international
networks, all libraries assume the responsibility of maintaining standards requisite to

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