Catalog (inventory)
A catalog or an inventory is a listing of documents or other objects in a specific collection, as opposed to a bibliography, which is a listing of publication disregarding their location in collections.
Their are many kinds of catalogs, for example, library catalogs, museum catalogs, publishers' and bookstores' catalogs, manuscript catalogs, stamp catalogs etc. Union catalogs are catalogs listing objects in more than one collection.
Library catalogs were prior to 1980s mainly paper based. During the 1980s they became generally available as OPACs.
It is important to consider that users have always found most of their references in alternatives to the library catalog. Libraries may be important for the physical delivery of documents. The identification of documents that the users want to borrow or browse may, however, be obtained by other tools. Many documents are identified in bibliographical references of documents already obtained in one or another way. Bibliographic databases are also serious competing tools. Because bibliographical databases usually have a better coverage, better specificity and exhaustivity of indexing and often contain abstracts, they are usually much better tools compared to library catalogs.
Literature:
Antelman, K.; Lynema, E. & Pace, A. K. (2006). Toward a twenty-first century library catalog. Information Technology & Libraries, 25(3), 128-139.
Caidi, N. (2004). The politics of library artifacts: The national union catalog.
Library Quarterly, 74(3), 337-369.
Coyle, K. (2005). Catalogs, card - and other anachronisms.
Journal of Academic Librarianship, 31(1), 60-62.
Tennant, R. (2003). Library catalogs: The wrong solution. Library Journal, 128(3), p.28. Available at: http://libraryjournal.com/article/CA273959.html
Yu, S. C.; Chen, H. H. & Chang, H. W. (2005). Building an open archive union
catalog for digital archives. Electronic Library, 23(4), 410-418.
See also: Catalog card (Lifeboat for KO); Document Description; Document typology, ; Webpac
Birger Hjørland
Last edited: 17-10-2006