The key to a library's collections is its catalog. Without some organized means for determining what materials are available in a library, a library user would be lost. One of the main purposes for having libraries is to provide users with access to a diverse range of materials. To that end, librarians catalog materials, assigning them various access points in the library's catalog. The typical means of access are by author, by title, and by subject. Each of these access points is available to library users via the library's catalog.

For example, if a library acquired a copy of Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, librarians would examine the book carefully to determine author, title, and subjects dealt with. This may seem simple, but it is much more complicated than what you might expect. For author's name alone, librarians should consult authority lists that verify the spelling of the name and the author's birth and death dates. In some cases the author may write under various pen names. Some provision must also be made to cross-reference the pen name to the author's real name. Additionally, if a work is co-authored, librarians must identify and verify each of the contributing authors and provide users with catalog accesses to the same book by co-authors' names. And this is only for authors of a work. Titles must also be verified and standardized. For example, in the case of Gibbon's book, another title by which the book may be referenced is The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. A user searching for the book by that title would not likely find it if the book was listed only under the title History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Now, add to this mixture of author name accesses and title accesses accesses by subject headings and you have a pretty complicated process for providing users with quick and easy access to one book. Multiply the process by thousands or by hundreds of thousands of times depending on the number of books included in a library's collections and you may begin to have a better feel for the labors that librarians perform on a regular basis just to provide you, the user, with a usable collection of materials. Are you impressed? You'd better be!

Before computers provided possibilities for automating the cataloging process, librarians painstakingly typed cards for the library's catalog. For a book like Gibbon's Decline and Fall, this would have meant typing an author catalog card, a title catalog card, and anywhere from one to three or more subject catalog cards. Assuming that this book was indexed under three different subject headings, this would require the preparation of five separate cards for the library's catalog. If a library had a collection of 6000 volumes averaging 5 cards per volume, the library's catalog would consist of 30,000 typed cards! This represents thousands of hours of work on the part of librarians just in preparing the cards for the library's catalog, let alone the time it takes to examine a book carefully to determine its author, title, and subject matter. Prior to the use of card catalogs, libraries would normally update their catalogs very infrequently. The catalogs were typically published in book form and, in many cases, provided access to the library's collection only by author's name. The card catalog gave a big boost to library usability from the user's perspective. As you can see from the foregoing example, the move to providing users access via a card catalog also meant a huge increase in the librarian's work load and responsibilities.

Computers and electronic data entry revolutionized the cataloging process and enabled librarians the world over to share cataloging responsibilities. As computer networks became prevalent, libraries could join such consortiums as OCLC and use cataloging already done by other libraries, thus minimizing duplication of effort among member libraries. The storage of cataloging records in machine readable form also automated the production of cards for the library's card catalog. Instead of having to type individual cards, cards could be machine generated, thus saving additional staff hours. Someone still had to file the cards in the appropriate catalogs, but filing was a far cry less time consuming than preparing the cards.

Computerized cataloging also made it possible to produce OPACs, or Online Public Access Catalogs, which have for the most part replaced the card catalog in most libraries. The move away from the card catalog was a gradual one. One precursor to the modern OPAC was the COMCAT, or Computer Output Microfiche Catalog, essentially a reproduction of the library's catalog on microfiche. This was soon followed by CD-ROM catalogs. Libraries that maintained computerized cataloging for their collections could have their catalogs produced as searchable compact disc catalogs that were accessible using specially designed software that could be run on a PC. The advent of the OPAC, with its built-in searching flexibility, has all but eliminated the traditional card catalog and the OPAC's microfiche and CD-ROM precursors. The OPAC has also meant enhanced user access to a library's holdings, providing access by all the traditional keys (author, title, and subject), but also providing keyword access and even sorting capabilities (the ability to select materials by type--video, books, periodical, etc., by date, etc.).

Page updated 01/07.