SOME RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN CATALOGUING IN THE U.S.A.
| Date | 01 February 1950 |
| Published date | 01 February 1950 |
| Pages | 70-82 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb026154 |
| Author | L. JOLLEY |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Library & information science |
SOME RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN
CATALOGUING IN THE U.S.A.
by L. JOLLEY
Librarian,
The Royal
College
of
Physicians,
Edinburgh
THE
last ten years have seen a remarkable revival of interest in cataloguing
in the United States. As late
as
1935 the veteran cataloguer, J. C. M. Hanson,
was complaining that cataloguing no longer attracted the same attention as
the financial, sociological, or even mechanical aspects of librarianship. A
few years later the situation had completely changed, and since 1940 the
problem of cataloguing has become one of the chief subjects for discussion
amongst American librarians. The immediate occasion for this revival of
interest was the publication of the preliminary edition of the American
revision of the Anglo-American code. Work on this had begun in 1930, but
for the first few years the work of revision was left entirely to cataloguers and
treated
as a
matter exclusively of technical and specialist interest. Then, just
be-
fore publication of the preliminary edition,
as
an American cataloguer ruefully
remarks,
it occurred to some administrators and
a
few cataloguers that the time
was ripe for a review of the whole of current cataloguing theory and practice.
To understand this position it is necessary to recall briefly the development
of cataloguing in the United States in the first forty years of the century.
The Joint Code, which was accepted by the British and American Library
Associations in 1908, is looked upon in this country primarily as a means of
establishing uniformity of practice amongst English-speaking librarians. To
American librarians there was another aspect. To them the 1908 code was
part of the movement to establish Library of Congress practice as the standard
practice for the whole country. This would seem to be what one would
expect as the Library of Congress is not merely the largest library in the
country but actually does a great part of the cataloguing for the other
libraries. Indeed, in 1904, Cutter himself recommended the general accept-
ance of Library of Congress rules. The 1908 code did not go as far as had
been hoped to reconcile Library of Congress practice with that of the remain-
ing libraries of the U.S.A. It did, however, record the cases in which its
recommendations differed from those of the Library of Congress and the
movement for the establishment of a single Library of Congress code for all
libraries continued. One reason why it did not succeed more quickly was
that Library of Congress practice was not itself sufficiently codified. As time
went on, fresh developments had to be made and new decisions recorded
and the alternatives given in the 1908 code were no longer adequate indica-
tions of what the Library of Congress actually did. The Library's rules for
two special types of material were published,1 but most new decisions were
1 MacNair (Mary W.): A guide to the
cataloguing
of
periodicals.
1918. 3rd ed. 1925. Pierson
(Harriet
W.): A guide to the
cataloguing
of
the
serial
publications
of
societies
and institutions. 1919.
2nd
ed. 1931.
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