Organizing Audiovisual and Electronic Resources for Access: A Cataloging Guide

Citation

Bowman, J.H. (2002), "Organizing Audiovisual and Electronic Resources for Access: A Cataloging Guide", Program: electronic library and information systems, Vol. 36 No. 1, pp. 58-59. https://doi.org/10.1108/prog.2002.36.1.58.10

Any book that starts “Cataloging is the corner‐stone of librarianship”, as this does, is bound to recommend itself to this reviewer. The book is designed for students, cataloguers and anyone else who needs to know how to catalogue non‐book materials. Not all non‐book materials are covered: this book is restricted to sound recordings, video‐recordings, computer files, interactive multimedia, and Internet resources, but these are certainly those which are most likely to be encountered in a present‐day library or information service.

Each of these types of material has a chapter to itself, and these chapters are all presented in the same format. They start by setting out the particular challenges of dealing with that format, continuing by listing the possible MARC fields that might be needed. The descriptive fields are then discussed one at a time, following the order of the relevant chapter of AACR2 and with reference to MARC tags, and there are examples to show how information obtained from different parts of the item would be transcribed into the catalogue record. Access points come next, followed by subject analysis and arrangement. The latter is a particularly useful section, as it discusses the pros and cons of shelving each kind of material separately or with other media, and thus relates the cataloguing process closely to the question of user accessibility. Finally, in each chapter there is a sequence of ten examples, their sources of information reproduced in what might be described as “quasi‐facsimile”, with a complete MARC record and a discussion of the points arising therefrom. This is a very valuable part of each chapter, as it provides some kind of simulation of cataloguing practice, which is the only way in which a cataloguer can acquire competence.

It must be difficult to write a book about cataloguing. AACR2 is so repetitive, using the same structure in each chapter, that if you are to follow the same structure there is bound to be considerable repetition. That is certainly the case here, but I think that it works because it allows the reader to consider one format at a time without having to refer to and fro between formats. If it takes up considerable space, that is for the publisher to decide, and this publisher clearly felt it worthwhile.

The MARC of course is entirely American, MARC21, and the book will therefore be especially useful to those libraries now facing the abandonment of UKMARC and conversion to a somewhat different system of coding. Users of UKMARC forget about the use of special tags and indicators to generate print constants in catalogues and, although they appear in MARC21, I cannot help wondering whether any OPACs are programmed to cope properly with them.

Preceding and following the five chapters on specific come general formats. The first covers the organisation of information and the importance of cataloguing in the information transfer cycle. Chapter 2 gives, in 20 pages, an overview of cataloguing. Though general, this is nevertheless written with non‐book materials in mind. It includes assignment of access points and subject analysis, and there is a very brief discussion of the merits of different classification schemes. The final chapter is entitled “Cataloging and the changing information environment”, and discusses the changing nature of scholarly communication, and the responses that the library community has made to these changes. Metadata are covered briefly, and the chapter concludes with a positive view of the future of cataloguing and cataloguers.

The whole work has plenty of references, which those needing to know more can follow up. There is an author/title index and a subject index, the latter seeming rather slight in relation to the size of the book. This apart, this thoroughly American book is Americanly thorough.