Metadata are crucial for discovery and access by providing contextual, technical, and administrative information in a standard form. Yet metadata are also sites of tension between sociocultural representations, resource constraints, and standardized systems. Formal and informal interventions may be interpreted as quality issues, political acts to…

Organizational affiliations of the creators of works are important to a variety of stakeholders, including academic administrators, funders, publishers, repository managers, software developers, rights agencies and individual researchers. Identifying and tracking these affiliations can be challenging, as organizations may be known by a variety of…

Examines the problem resolution phase of a retrospective conversion project of monographic records at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst (UMass). The kinds of problems encountered are categorized and discussed. Suggestions for developing editing guidelines are offered, and the guidelines developed for standardization of problem resolution at…

Thailand faces three major problems in bibliographical control and service: an inhibiting and restrictive Printing Law, lack of library cooperation and little financial support. (SJ)

Describes the numerous and profound problems with accepting Romanization as the sole means for universal bibliographic control, and suggests that some numerical system like the ISBN numbers might evolve to secure better bibliographic control of dissimilar scripts. (Author/VT)

Briefly describes the 1978 National Conference on Cataloging and Information Services for Machine-Readable Data Files, listing its recommendations; notes related cataloging activities of the Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards and the MARC Format Working Group; and illustrates the cataloging of two bibliographic data bases using…

Describes the histories and efforts of various agencies concerned with providing formulas for adequate bibliographical control of microform collections. (Author)

Reports on the American Library Association's efforts to update the Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (DCRM). Describes topics of working groups that include transcription of early letter forms, rare book cataloging of machine-press books, collection-level cataloging, problems and lacunae, and varieties of editions and issues and when to…

The need for bibliographic control of microforms is generally recognized, and the technology for establishing such control exists. Efforts so far towards achieving this end have been uncoordinated, poorly supported, and generally unsuccessful. (Author/VT)

Geological field trip guidebooks, developed for use during a field trip or field conference, are considered ephemeral publications by their compilers and publishers. Too few copies are printed and little attention is paid to bibliographic format and information. These difficulties are discussed and recommendations are made to alleviate the…

Provides a brief history of the cataloging of microform reproductions of previously published works and reviews several problems occasioned by the application of AACR2 Chapter 11, which requires a totally new record for microform reproductions. (CHC)

Holds that traditional library classification systems are inadequate to handle psychological literature, and advocates the establishment of new theoretical approaches to bibliographic organization. (FM)

Authority control of a cataloging database is essential to support an effective machine readable catalog. Automated authority control can provide assistance with the difficult, intellectually demanding part of cataloging: integrating new items into a collection. (Author)

Discusses efforts by the Library of Congress, the National Library of Canada, and the British Library to harmonize their respective MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging) formats. Describes the harmonization of USMARC and CAN/MARC and explains why problems make the harmonization with UKMARC not feasible at the present time. (LRW)

Documents in non-Roman scripts now constitute a sizeable part of world production, and their bibliographic control through Romanization is beset by many problems. Among these are the impossibility to simultaneously satisfy certain functional requirements, the multiplicity of schemes and their inconsistent use, and the susceptibility of the method…