505 Cataloguing

Information organisation is achieved through systematic labeling, arranging and indexing of the library collection.  The amount of information available is increasing every day, and exists in a growing number of formats (Howarth, 2005, p205).  Organisation is necessary to facilitate information retrieval (Hider, 2012, p11).  Resources can be physically labeled and arranged, but to increase the efficiency of locating particular items, indexing is crucial.  Compiling an index allows individual items to have more than one point of access, meaning they have a better chance of being found by a user.   Resource description standards ensure metadata is consistent between creators, and can be shared across institutions (Hider, 2012, p104).

The physical aspects of this organisation are labeling and arrangement (Chan, 2007;  Hider, 2012, p11).  The intention of organisation is to make a resource easier to find.  Whatever system is selected for a library, it must be used consistently throughout.  One library cannot use both the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) and the Library of Congress system.  Labels should be applied as uniformly as possible to individual items (for example on the spine of a book at the bottom).  These labels are also metadata, as they describe the resource (Hider, 2012, p12).  DDC allows resources to be arranged so that books with similar subject matter are located near one another, and individual sections are alphabetized to further facilitate retrieval.

The intention of organisation is to make a resource easier to find.  Whatever system is selected for a library, it must be used consistently throughout.  One library cannot use both the Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) and the Library of Congress system.   

The primary objective of the library catalogue, is that the user is able to locate what they need (Hider, p109).  

 

Chan, L. M. (2007). Classification and categorization. In Cataloguing and classification : an introduction (3^rd ed.) Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press.

Hider, P. (2012).  Information Resource Description.  Creating and managing metadata.  Facet Publishing, Great Britain.

Howarth, L.C. 2005. Enabling Metadate:  Creating Core Records for Resource Discovery.  International Cataloguing and Bibliographic Control 34 (1) (January 2005): 14-17.