Page 54 - DLIS405_INFORMATION_STORAGE_AND_RETRIEVAL

Unit 4: Cataloguing–Development and Trends

A new Statement of International Cataloguing Principles was published by IFLA in 2009. In these Notes
principles, which replace and broaden the Paris Principles of 1961, the fifth section is devoted to
bibliographic description where it is stated that “Descriptive data should be based on an
internationally agreed standard.”A footnote identifies the ISBD as the standard for the library
community, as the statement of principles is intended not only for libraries but also for archives,
museums, and other communities.
Although the development of this standard was originally motivated by the automation of
bibliographic control as well as by the economic necessity of sharing cataloguing, the ISBD continues
to be useful for and applicable to bibliographic descriptions of all kinds of resources in any type of
catalogue, whether online or in a form less technologically advanced. Those agencies using national
and multinational cataloguing codes could apply this internationally agreed-upon standard
conveniently in their catalogues.

Work on the ISBD has been guided by the following objectives and principles:
• The ISBD provides consistent stipulations for description of all types of published resources,
to the extent that uniformity is possible, and specific stipulations for specific types of re-
sources as required to describe those resources.
• The ISBD provides the stipulations for compatible descriptive cataloguing worldwide in or-
der to aid the international exchange of bibliographic records between national bibliographic
agencies and throughout the international library and information community (including
producers and publishers).
• The ISBD accommodates different levels of description, including those needed by national
bibliographic agencies, national bibliographies, universities and other research collections.
• The descriptive elements needed to identify and select a resource must be specified.
• The set of elements of information rather than the display or use of those elements in a spe-
cific automated system provides the focus.
• Cost-effective practices must be considered in developing the stipulations.
The organization of provisions in the present text is to give first the general stipulations that apply
to all types of resources, then the specific stipulations that add information required for that specific
type of resource or are exceptions to a general rule.
In general, the ISBD is applied to describe manifestations, by means of description of the item in
hand as an exemplar of the entire manifestation, in the terminology of Functional Requirements for
Bibliographic Records (FRBR).

The ISBD applies the Statement of International Cataloguing Principles, which
establishes that “A bibliographic description typically should be based on the item as
representative of the manifestation”.
In the ISBD, national bibliographic agencies are called upon to prepare definitive descriptions that
“contain all the mandatory elements set out in the ISBD insofar as the information is applicable to
the resource. This practice is also recommended for application by libraries that share bibliographic
data with each other. Inclusion of a data element is considered “mandatory” in all cases for certain
elements, and in other cases is considered “mandatory” when necessary for identification of the
resource being described or otherwise considered important to users of a bibliography or a catalogue.

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