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library
Table of Contents
library

 * Introduction
   
 * 
   The changing role of libraries
   
 * The history of libraries
    * The ancient world
      * Greece and Alexandria
      * Pergamum
      * Rome
      * Byzantium
      * The Islāmic world
   
    * The Middle Ages and the Renaissance
      * The role of the European monasteries
      * The new learning
      * Effects of the Reformation and religious wars
      * The Islāmic world
   
    * 17th and 18th centuries and the great national libraries
      * Library planning
      * Emergence of national collections
      * The effects of the French Revolution
   
    * Later developments

 * Types of libraries
    * National libraries
      * Bibliothèque Nationale
      * The British Library
      * Library of Congress
      * Russian State Library
      * Other national collections
   
    * University and research libraries
   
    * Public libraries
   
    * Special libraries
   
    * School libraries
   
    * Private libraries
   
    * Subscription libraries
   
    * Archives

 * 
   National libraries of the world
   
 * The library operation
    * Training and library management
      * The professional librarian
      * Training institutes
   
    * Library materials
      * Types of materials
        * Ancient materials
        * Photographs
        * Audiovisual materials
        * Magnetic materials
      * Access to materials
   
    * Technical services
      * Acquisition and supply
        * Criteria for selection
        * Acquisition systems
      * Cataloging
        * Cataloging by author and subject
        * Catalog systems
        * Vehicles for catalogs
        * Catalog standardization
          * Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules
          * Resource Description and Access
          * Other codes
        * Thesauri
      * Classification
        * The Dewey Decimal system
        * The Universal Decimal system
        * The Library of Congress system
        * The Bliss system
        * The Colon system
        * The Marxist system
      * Preservation
        * Reformatting
        * Deacidification
        * Future-conscious manufacturing
   
    * User services
      * Circulation
      * Reference and retrieval
        * Retrospective searching
        * Current-awareness service
      * Community information
        * Library extension programs
        * Community awareness programs
   
    * Interlibrary relations
      * Library cooperation
        * Interlibrary lending
        * Cooperative acquisition and storage
        * Cooperative cataloging
      * Associations and international organizations

Fast Facts
 * 2-Min Summary
 * Facts & Related Content
 * Quizzes

Media
 * Videos
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 * More Articles On This Topic
 * Additional Reading
 * Contributors
 * Article History


CATALOG STANDARDIZATION

The ideal of centralized cataloging led to increased interest in standardized
forms of entry. As libraries grew larger after the Renaissance, it became
necessary to devise some form of standard to ensure consistency among several
catalogs. Perhaps the most famous, the British Museum Rules, was inspired by Sir
Anthony Panizzi and has influenced all succeeding codes, though most of them
have departed considerably from the original. The Vatican Rules and the Prussian
Instructions have both been subject to commissions for revision, but certainly
the most influential code is a joint British and American effort, Catalog Rules:
Author and Title Entries, first published in 1908 and revised in 1967. A further
revision was published in 1978 as Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, second
edition; it is commonly referred to as AACR2.

Douglas John Foskett The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica



ANGLO-AMERICAN CATALOGUING RULES

The second edition of Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR2) is the most
widely used cataloging code, designed for use in the construction of catalogs
and other lists in general libraries of all sizes. It is published jointly by
the American Library Association, the Canadian Library Association, and the
Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in the United
Kingdom. AACR2 comprises a detailed set of rules and guidelines for preparing
bibliographic records to represent library resources, established to maintain
consistency within the catalog and between the catalogs of libraries using the
same code. The rules cover the description of areas such as the title, the
publisher, the edition, the series, etc., as well as provision of access points
for all library materials, including books, serials, cartographic materials,
electronic resources, and so on.

AACR2 is structured in two parts. Part I deals with the provision of information
describing the item being cataloged, and Part II deals with the rules for
determination and establishment of access points under which the descriptive
information is to be presented to catalog users and with the making of
references to those headings. In both parts the rules proceed from the general
to the specific. The second edition of the rules is based on a reconciliation of
the British and North American texts of the 1967 edition. This extends to style,
which is generally in accordance with The Chicago Manual of Style, and to
spellings, which are those of Webster’s New International Dictionary.



Many other discussions, revisions, and simplifications have taken place since
the mid-20th century. Short versions of the major codes were published for small
libraries in certain countries; the public instruction ministry in Italy issued
new rules; a French commission on cataloging issued standards for anonymous
works; and in the former Soviet Union, proposals were published for
standardizing the transcription of Chinese names into Cyrillic script. All these
codes dealt with the use and entering of a consistent form of the names of
authors, including Anonymous in the case of anonymous works, and sometimes, as
in AACR2, with titles.

AACR2 has been succeeded by Resource Description and Access (RDA), which was
released in June 2010. RDA builds on the strengths of AACR2 with some new
features that make it more useful for resource description as a cataloging code
for the modern libraries operating in a digital environment.




RESOURCE DESCRIPTION AND ACCESS

Resource Description and Access (RDA) is the new standard for descriptive
cataloging providing data elements, instructions, and guidelines on recording
the contents and formulating bibliographic metadata for description and access
to information resources covering all types of content and media held in
libraries and related cultural organizations, such as museums and archives. RDA
is designed for the digital world. The metadata created by following RDA
instructions are well formed according to international models for user-focused
linked data applications that are compatible with existing records in online
library catalogs and also adaptable to new and emerging database structures.

RDA is the successor to Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, second edition
(AACR2), which is still the most widely used cataloging standard worldwide.
Built on the foundations established by AACR2, the organization of RDA is based
on international standards developed by the International Federation of Library
Associations and Institutions (IFLA), such as Functional Requirements for
Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and Functional Requirements for Authority Data
(FRAD).

The creation of RDA was the result of collaboration between representatives from
the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, and Australia. RDA was
developed by the RDA Steering Committee (formerly the Joint Steering Committee
for Development of RDA) as part of its strategic plan (2005–09) to replace
AACR2. RDA was initially published in June 2010 under the title RDA Toolkit as
an online resource by the American Library Association, the Canadian Library
Association, and the Chartered Institute of Library and Information
Professionals (CILIP). The text of RDA consists of 10 sections divided into 37
chapters, with 13 appendices, a glossary, and an index. RDA was widely
implemented in 2013 by the Library of Congress, the British Library, and other
major libraries.

Salman Haider



OTHER CODES

A separate set of codes for subject cataloging emerged mainly in the United
States. These subject headings took the form of lists of subject headings, the
three best known being the list compiled by Minnie E. Sears, the Library of
Congress Subject Headings, and the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) of the U.S.
National Library of Medicine.




THESAURI

A new use of the term thesaurus, now widespread, dates from the early 1950s in
the work of H.P. Luhn, at International Business Machines Corporation (IBM), who
was searching for a computer process that could create a list of authorized
terms for the indexing of scientific literature. The list was to include a
structure of cross-references between families of notions, in the manner of P.M.
Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases (1852) and similar to the
structure of faceted classification schemes. A major thesaurus, and one of the
earliest, is the Thesaurofacet (1969), a list of engineering terms in great
detail designed by Jean Aitchison for the English Electric Company. The
thesaurus has proved very useful both for indexing and for searching in machine
systems. It is especially helpful in such areas as medicine, aerospace, and
other scientific and technical fields.



Thesauri depend upon the concept of controlled vocabulary, subject headings
organized into lists that help users locate the appropriate heading for their
topic of interest and find related terms used for narrower or broader topics.
One of the functions of controlled vocabulary is to select from what may be a
large group of synonyms the one term that most accurately describes a topic.
When libraries use that one term consistently, their users will know where to
look to find materials on any topic of interest. Books on travel in Britain, for
example, might be described as travel, tourism, or sightseeing in Britain, Great
Britain, or the United Kingdom. By selecting one expression of this topic—for
example, “Great Britain—Description and Travel”—a library ensures that all of
the books on the topic will be grouped under one subject heading in the catalog.

The disadvantage of controlled vocabulary systems such as subject headings lists
is that they are slow to evolve. New topics and new ways of thinking and talking
about topics continually evolve, and, although there are ongoing efforts to keep
controlled vocabulary lists as up-to-date as possible, they inevitably lag
behind ordinary language usage. As a result, some topics may be difficult to
find using the subject heading approach. For this reason, many library systems,
particularly those that use computerized information retrieval techniques,
combine controlled vocabulary such as subject headings with free vocabulary:
descriptions of the topic of books or other materials using ordinary language.
In these systems, subject headings are supplemented with topic descriptions such
as abstracts and summaries, which have no restrictions on descriptive
vocabulary.




CLASSIFICATION

While catalogs aim to identify and list items in a collection, schemes of
classification have a more general application in arranging documents in a
sequence that will make sense and be helpful to the user. Because they display
subjects, and not documents, they can be used in several libraries, and some
indeed have found applications in many different countries. Like schemes for
grouping entries in catalogs, classifications—whether of knowledge based on
philosophical principles, of the subject faculties of universities, or of the
pragmatic grouping of books on shelves—have formed the basis of many individual
systems.




THE DEWEY DECIMAL SYSTEM

The best known of all schemes for the classification of documents in libraries
is the Dewey Decimal Classification, devised by Melvil Dewey in 1873 and
published in 1876. Apart from being the first modern classification scheme for
libraries, the Dewey system embodies two of Dewey’s many contributions to the
theory and practice of librarianship. First, he recognized that a systematic
arrangement of books on shelves should make sense to the users; his scheme
therefore reflected the dominant pattern of current thinking, exemplified by the
“classificatory sciences.” And second, he used decimals as notation symbols,
which illustrated the way in which subjects were divided hierarchically, from
main classes to specific topics. An example from the schedule for chemistry
shows how numbers are subdivided:

 * 540 chemistry and allied sciences
 * 541 physical and theoretical chemistry
 * 541.2 theoretical chemistry
 * 541.3 physical chemistry
 * 541.34 solutions
 * 541.35 photochemistry
 * 542 laboratories, apparatus, equipment

Another feature of the Dewey system is the mnemonics used for certain types of
subdivisions. Thus, many subjects can be subdivided geographically by the use of
the historical-geographic number as decimals:

 * 900 general geography and history
 * 970 history of North America
 * 973 history of the United States

Combining with the art schedule, the number for history of art in the United
States is obtained:

 * 700 the arts
 * 709 history of art
 * 709.73 history of art in the United States

The Dewey Decimal system and the Library of Congress system, mentioned below,
are the classification schemes most frequently used in North American libraries.


THE UNIVERSAL DECIMAL SYSTEM

The Universal Decimal Classification, published in 1905 and preferred by
scientific and technical libraries, was an immediate offspring of the Dewey
system. Paul Otlet and Henri La Fontaine adapted the Dewey system as the basis
for a much more detailed scheme suitable for use in a vast card index of books
and periodical articles in classified order—a universal bibliography of recorded
knowledge. While retaining the basic generic hierarchies, the Universal Decimal
Classification makes far greater use of the technique of synthesis, by providing
a series of auxiliary tables for aspects of subjects likely to appear in several
parts of the main schedules. These tables are indicated by the use of symbols
such as punctuation marks. The colon sign (:) indicates a relationship between
any parts and is the most commonly used sign. The numeral 669.1 being the
notation for iron and steel and 546.22 for sulfur, the compound subject can be
indicated by the notation 669.1:546.22, sulfur in iron and steel.

Like the Dewey Decimal Classification, the Universal Decimal Classification has
been translated into many languages, and it is in use in many European and Asian
libraries. European libraries, in particular, have emphasized classification
systems over subject heading systems, basing their subject catalogs on the
classification system, with an alphabetic index to class numbers. The revision
of the Universal Decimal Classification has become a responsibility of the
International Federation for Information and Documentation (Fédération
Internationale d’Information et de Documentation; FID).


THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SYSTEM

At the turn of the 20th century Herbert Putnam, the Librarian of Congress,
decided to reclassify the library but rejected the Dewey system. His staff
adopted a more pragmatic approach based entirely on the way in which the books
were arranged in their subjects on the shelves. They also rejected the decimal
notation, preferring a purely ordinal system combining letters and numbers,
leaving blank spaces where they expected new subjects to develop. (Not all of
their expectations have proved correct.) American libraries and some scholarly
libraries elsewhere have found the scheme attractive for its depth of detail,
inasmuch as it is based on a very large library. An additional advantage is that
Library of Congress notations appear on the library’s catalog cards and on
computer tapes produced by the MARC project. It uses both alphabet letters and
numbers for its classification codes.


THE BLISS SYSTEM

Although not widely used, the bibliographic classification system invented by
Henry E. Bliss of the College of the City of New York (published in 1935 as A
System of Bibliographic Classification) has made important contributions to the
theory of classification, particularly in Bliss’s acute perception of the role
of synthesis and his insistence that a library scheme should reflect the
organization of knowledge and the system of the sciences. His systematic
auxiliary schedules, designed to achieve what he called composite specification,
carry the synthetic principle into every subject area and give a far higher
degree of flexibility than does a purely enumerative scheme such as the Library
of Congress system. The Bliss Classification Association, founded in the United
Kingdom in 1967, promotes the use and development of the Bliss classification
scheme.


THE COLON SYSTEM

Perhaps the most important advance in classification theory has been made by the
Indian librarian S.R. Ranganathan, whose extraordinary output of books and
articles has left its mark on the entire range of studies from archival science
to information science. He introduced the term facet analysis to denote the
technique of dividing a complex subject into its several parts by relating them
to a set of five fundamental categories of abstract notions, which he called
personality, energy, matter, space, and time. He employed these in his Colon
Classification system (1933), which is used in some Indian libraries but has
found few followers elsewhere. Nevertheless, the ideas in the scheme, expounded
in his Colon Classification (1933) and Prolegomena to Library Classification
(1937), have influenced all later work in classification theory and practice,
including subsequent editions of the Dewey, Universal, and Bliss systems.


THE MARXIST SYSTEM

In China a scheme has been published that departs somewhat from the
Anglo-American traditions and claims to reflect the structure of knowledge
according to the principles of Marxist philosophy. It has an enumerative
structure and may be distinguished by its detail of analysis of, and dependence
on, the corpus of Marxist literature—a literature that, in Anglo-American
schemes, usually occupies a relatively minor place.


PRESERVATION

One model of library service is that collections are used so extensively that
the materials disintegrate from heavy use. Librarians who espouse this ideal
maintain that libraries are for use and that any materials not in active use
should be removed from the collection, a process known as weeding. A competing
model holds that much of the world’s great literature is available to be read
chiefly because libraries of the past preserved that literature. This model
encourages the preservation of materials so that the intellectual and cultural
heritage received and created by the current generation can be transmitted to
future generations.

Libraries most active in the area of preservation are usually large research
libraries, which have the largest collections and perhaps the greatest concern
for future users. On the whole most libraries try to strike a balance between
maximizing current use and preserving materials for future use. In recent
decades, the move toward preservation of library materials has been given
additional impetus by the discovery that much 19th- and 20th-century paper
retains acid introduced in the manufacturing process and that this acid,
combined with the effects of air pollution, is causing many books to
disintegrate as they sit on library shelves.


REFORMATTING

In response to this problem, libraries have developed several preservation
strategies. The most important method of preserving library materials has been
reformatting. Brittle and crumbling books and photographs are preserved by
photographing them on microfilm or, in some cases, by using scanners to create
digital images on magnetic or optical disc. These less vulnerable formats can
then be preserved in archives. Reformatting also enables the inclusion of
library materials in other media, such as multimedia information services. The
drawback of this process, of course, is the issue of technological obsolescence.
If reformatting relies on technology that becomes obsolete, the preservation
effort is seriously compromised. The task of reformatting all materials that
used acidic paper, nitrate films, or other degradable materials is monumental,
generally requiring cooperation between many libraries and a substantial
infusion of government funds.


DEACIDIFICATION

In certain cases, reformatting is not the best solution to the problem of
disintegration. The original material may have intrinsic value as an artifact,
or it may lose some of its information in the reformatting process. In such
cases, paper materials are deacidified by one of a number of chemical processes,
some of which can also strengthen paper that has already been weakened. Mass
deacidification of paper is an increasingly important part of preservation.


FUTURE-CONSCIOUS MANUFACTURING

The most sensible solution to the preservation of books and journals for future
use is the adoption of nonacidic paper by publishers. Many paper plants have
begun to make a nonacidic paper that, with good care, will last for centuries
rather than decades. Use of this product for book production will obviate the
crumbling away of centuries of intellectual and cultural activity.



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