The theme of this week’s reading is the library catalog and the works by Panizzi, Cutter, Verona, and Wilson can be used to provide both diachronic and synchronic readings of the evolution and role of the catalog in the management of collections. As historical documents, the various works offer snapshots of practice and thinking of 1841, 1876, 1904, 1959, and 1983 as well as the evolution of the ontology and technology of cataloging practice – moving from the alphabetical inventory list to the author/title/subject organizational scheme to the MARC-record enabled database OPAC.
But what is central to the notion of cataloging?
I would argue that it is the application of algorithmic rules that join a given (growing) set of collection objects with an addressing scheme instantiated in a representational tool of increasing historical complexity – the bibliography, the list catalog, the card catalog, the database record catalog and increasingly artificial intelligence systems.
At first, the collection object was the bibliographical unit (the book), then the literary unit (author/works), then the database record, and now we are at the point where the collection object can be the text of a work itself (Google Books, Project Gutenberg) or a network of works (Memex, hypertext) making information itself the most granular object. But for any of this to be possible the rules and the technology has had to evolve and grow in tandem with new human needs and goals.
There is an unbroken lineage from the library world to the computer world when we conceptualize cataloging this way. This is what links Babbage’s analytical engine, DDCM& LOC rules, Principia Mathematica, Gödel numbers, and colon classification. Cataloging is thus a cybernetic activity providing organization, control, and communication of collections through a representational interface.
The complexity underlying the representational interface is compressed to near invisibility over time (how does Google work?) – and becomes more like magic because we no longer see how the trick is done. At some point, the catalog becomes more akin to incantation (ordinary language search phrase, complex Boolean logic, or anticipated personalization via machine learning systems) and justifies Arthur C. Clarke’s famous adage.
”Hey, Siri…”.
And yet…
More books are published than ever before and so the function of the catalog in a library context is still to provide a means of finding a book by a certain author, or with a certain title, or about a less defined subject. Cutter’s original 1876 formulation of the objects of the dictionary catalog (Cutter, 1904) stands the test of time (so far). Google is not a replacement for the library catalog (so far).
When I compare the work performed by the early figures in the field of library science like Cutter and Dewey to the figures of today it seems clear that torch of cataloging has passed from the librarian to the programmer and data scientist. Does any librarian today create anything comparable to their body of work? Could they? Is a library philosopher a nonsensical concept?
British Museum. (1841). Rules for the compilation of the catalogue. In Catalogue of printed books in the British Museum (Vol. 1, pp. v-ix). London, UK: J. B. Nichols and Son.
Cutter, C. A. (1876). Library catalogues. In Public libraries in the United States of America: Their history, condition, and management, Part I (pp. 526-549). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Cutter, C. A. (1904). General remarks, Definitions, Author-catalog entry. In Rules for a dictionary catalog (4 ed., pp. 11-56). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office.
Verona, E. (1959). Literary unit versus bibliographical unit. Libri, 9(2), 79-104.
Wilson, P. (1983). The catalog as access mechanism: Background and concepts. Library Resources & Technical Services, 27(1), 4-17.