Library rules

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Library rules (also catalog instructions ) are rules that determine how libraries have to enter their individual media in their library catalog . The purpose of these regulations is to obtain uniform and comparable catalogs for the individual media through their application .

A distinction must be made between rules for so-called formal indexing , which catalogs the formal characteristics of a title recording (e.g. author, title, place of publication and publisher), and rules for subject indexing , with which the content characteristics of the resource are described (e.g. . by keywords or descriptors ).

List of library regulations

Data formats

Since the introduction of electronic catalogs, sets of rules have often been related to a specific bibliographic data format . For example, when the title of a book is entered according to RAK, a corresponding data record is usually created in MAB format.

Theoretical foundations

The basic assumptions on which the individual sets of rules are based were formulated in various theoretical models. Anthony Panizzi (1841) and Charles Cutter (1876), for example, took on early pioneering roles . Cutter tried to define the general purpose of a catalog in his Rules for a dictionary catalog . His book had actual effects on library catalogs, especially in the USA. SR Ranganathan and Seymour Lubetzky were named as further pioneers .

Paris Principles

In 1961, at a conference of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) in Paris, the six-page Paris Principles were drafted, which determined the function and structure of library catalogs in the future. It was the first international agreement on fundamental questions of cataloging, which formed an important basis for the development of regulations such as the RAK.

International Standard Bibliographic Description

The International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) was also created by IFLA in 1971. It also does not contain any cataloging guidelines itself, but forms the basis for them. In the following years, separate regulations were drawn up for special media groups (such as the ISBD (CM) for maps or the ISBD (NBM) for non-book materials ). In 1977 a new edition for all media groups was published in 2011.

International cataloging principles

The International Cataloging Principles (ICP) are also an IFLA initiative and replace the Paris Principles. They have been valid since 2009 and, together with the FRBR, form the basis of the RDA. They build on the FRBR and other catalog traditions and were drawn up at conferences (the IFLA Meetings of Experts on an International Cataloging Code , IME-ICC) on four different continents: in Frankfurt am Main (2003), Buenos Aires (2004), Cairo (2005), Seoul (2006), Pretoria (2007).

The ICP are intended as a global guideline for the development of cataloging regulations. In doing so, they aim at uniformity in both formal and subject indexing and have been created for all types of media (not just books).

Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records

The FRBR are today's most important model and go back to an IFLA study of the same name published in 1998. They currently form the basis for the Resource Description and Access (RDA) set of rules that is already in use.

history

19th and first half of the 20th century

In England , Antonio Panizzi had already written 91 catalog rules in 1841, on which he created an alphabetical catalog for the British Museum . Cataloging rules were first set out in writing in Germany in 1850 at the Munich court library . Influenced by this, Karl Dziatzko wrote an instruction for the order of the titles in the alphabetical card catalog of the Royal and University Library in Breslau , which appeared hectographed in 1874 and printed in 1886. As a result, a commission created the Berlin rules, which a ministerial decree in 1892 declared to be binding for all Prussian university libraries . Soon even a complete Prussian catalog was considered, for which, however, a set of rules valid for all participating libraries was necessary. Building on the previous rules, the instructions for the alphabetical catalogs of the Prussian libraries and for the Prussian general catalog , briefly referred to as Prussian instructions, were created with Fritz Milkau's significant participation . The first edition appeared in 1899, the second revised in 1909. After the project of a Prussian general catalog was subsequently expanded to include a German general catalog, the Prussian instructions prevailed in almost all German libraries.

The rules now emerging in the Netherlands , Poland and Russia were also largely based on the Prussian instructions. In Austria , where the libraries collaborated on the Prussian general catalog, they were even generally converted. In France , Léopold Victor Delisle had already written his own instructions in 1889, which were followed when the Catalog General of the Bibliotheque Nationale was compiled. In Italy an official instruction came into effect in 1922, and the Vatican Apostolic Library published a set of rules drawn up with American librarians. Russia turned away from the Prussian instructions in 1917 and approached Anglo-American rules. Especially after the Second World War , a general approximation of the regulations of the Anglo-American area took place in Europe.

The development of library codes in America began in the 1850s with Charles Coffin Jewett . In contrast to the Prussian Instructions, the Anglo-American tradition also recognized corporate authors and used the mechanical principle instead of the grammatical one. Charles Ami Cutter founded the rules for the Dictionary Catalog in 1876, a combination of the alphabetical and the subject catalog. Around 1900 the desire arose for a supranational set of rules that was drawn up by a commission of the American Library Association and the Library Association of the United Kingdom and appeared in 1908 under the title Cataloging Rules. Nevertheless, both the Library of Congress and the British Museum continued to use their own rules, some of which differed greatly from the Cataloging Rules.

After the Second World War

If there was previously a fundamental difference between the German and Anglo-American regulations, international unification was pursued from 1945 onwards, but this was still a long time coming. First of all, an international IFLA conference took place in Paris in 1961, at which experts discussed the standardization of the cataloging principles, but also an extensive simplification of the previous rules. The most important consequence of the conference, however, was the development of a new German set of rules, the RAK. After there had been a need for a reform of the Prussian Instructions for some time, it was decided to abandon them. Based on the recommendations developed in Paris, specialist commissions of the FRG , the GDR , Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg created the RAK, which now also resorted to the mechanical principle and recognized the corporate authorship. In addition, the RAK were already suitable for use in electronic catalogs.

A milestone for further development was an IFLA conference of cataloging experts in Copenhagen in 1969 . The aim was to create a basis for international cooperation in future automated cataloging. As a result, the so-called Shared Cataloging Program was created and the already ongoing MARC project was expanded. The Shared Cataloging Program was originally an American company to establish a central catalog, which aimed to catalog each book only once. For this purpose, recordings of titles were created by one library according to the rules of the Library of Congress and passed on to the other participating libraries via printed slip-sheets. MARC was a first project carried out by the Library of Congress for the electronic and machine-readable creation and distribution of catalogs. A similar company, an online cataloging system, was founded by the OCLC in 1966.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Anthony Panizzi: Rules for the Compilation of the Catalog . In: Catalog of Printed Books in the British Museum , Vol. 1, London 1841, pp. V – IX.
  2. ^ A b Charles Cutter: Rules for a dictionary catalog , United States Government Printing Office , 1876.
  3. ^ See also William Denton: FRBR and the History of Cataloging . In: Arlene G. Taylor (Ed.): Understanding FRBR. What it is and how it will affect our Retrieval Tools , Libraries Unlimited, Westport 2007, pp. 35–57, here: pp. 35–49.
  4. ↑ The International Conference on Cataloging Principles: Statement of Principles , Paris 1961 ( online , PDF; 36 kB).
  5. ↑ IFLA (Ed.): Declaration on the International Cataloging Principles , 2009 ( online , PDF; 256 kB).
  6. ↑ Dietmar Strauch, Margarete Rehm: Lexikon Buch, Bibliothek, neue Medien , 2nd, updated and expanded edition, Saur, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3598117572 , p. 251.
  7. ^ Karl Dziatzko: Instruction for the order of the titles in the alphabetical card catalog of the Royal and University Library of Breslau , Asher, Berlin 1886 ( online ).
  8. ↑ Instructions for the alphabetical catalogs of the Prussian libraries and for the Prussian general catalog , Asher, Berlin 1899 ( online ).
  9. ↑ Instructions for the alphabetical catalogs of the Prussian libraries and for the Prussian general catalog , Behrend, Berlin 1899 ( online ).
  10. ↑ Dietmar Strauch, Margarete Rehm: Lexikon Buch, Bibliothek, neue Medien , 2nd, updated and expanded edition, Saur, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3598117572 , p. 250.
  11. ↑ Dietmar Strauch, Margarete Rehm: Lexikon Buch, Bibliothek, neue Medien , 2nd, updated and expanded edition, Saur, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3598117572 , pp. 250-251.
  12. ↑ a b Dietmar Strauch, Margarete Rehm: Lexikon Buch, Bibliothek, neue Medien , 2nd, updated and expanded edition, Saur, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3598117572 , p. 251.
  13. ↑ Dietmar Strauch, Margarete Rehm: Lexikon Buch, Bibliothek, neue Medien , 2nd, updated and expanded edition, Saur, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3598117572 , pp. 251-252.