Question: Anglo American Cataloguing Rules (AACR) concentrates on three basic elements of

cataloguing. With examples explain the elements.

The Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR) are included in a national cataloging code, first
published in 1967. AACR2 stands for the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, Second Edition. It
is published jointly by the American Library Association (ALA), the Canadian Library
Association (CLA), and the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
(CILLP) in the UK. AACR2 is designed for use in the construction of catalogues and other lists in
general libraries of all sizes. The rules cover the description of, and the provision of access points
for, all library materials commonly collected at the present time.
Catalogue is a list of the documents in a library, with the entries representing the documents
arranged for access in some systematic order. Catalogues, today, are often held as a computer
database, usually called an OPAC. Otherwise, a catalogue may be held as a card catalogue, or on
microform, or as a printed book. (According to J, Rowley and J, Farrow. An Introduction to
managing Access to Information 3rd Ed, 2000)
A catalogue comprises a number of entries, each of which is access point for a document. A
document may have several entries or just one.
All catalogue entries has three section:-
i. Heading: this is the access point, the element under which the record ids filled.
ii. Description, identifying and further characterizing the item.
iii. Shelfmark: a mark identifying the physical location of the item within the collection.
(According to J, Rowley and J, Farrow. An Introduction to managing Access to Information 3rd
Ed, 2000)
According to Cutter, Rules for a Dictionary catalogue (Fourth Ed, 1904), Catalogue is a finding
list contents of a library or library system still holds good, but which the reservation that in recent
years attitudes to retrieval have become access based rather than collection based, so that many
catalogues range more widely than their own collections.
According to Mary Liu Kao, PhD, MLS, MS, Catalogue is a list or a record of all the materials in
a library or in a consortium of libraries.
According to Aina L.O (2004) Catalogue is a list of all items in a collection, usually arranged by
author, tittle and the subject. It is an index to the collection of the Library.
Catalogue is the most important of the retrieval tools for organization a library collection.
There are basically two types of library catalogues.
 Single library catalogue which provides an index to all the materials being held by a
particular Library.
 Union catalogue, which is a joint catalogue of more than one library collection. It is
combined list of all materials present in the participating Libraries. It may include up to 50
 or more libraries. It should emphasize that a library catalogue is a growing list, as it is not
static. Library acquires new materials regularly, hence the catalogue is constantly updated.
It is important to emphasise that users do not really retrieve documents from catalogue. What they
access is the document representation which is called surrogate or substitute of the document in a
collection. But it now possible for the user to access a documents through the advent of the Internet
and the CD-ROM itself, the main functions of retrieval tools is to retrieve the document substitues.

Importance of Cataloguing
A catalogue is required when a collection grows so big that it is not possible for one individual to
have a mental record of all the materials present in a collection. For example , in a collection with
less than 250 documents like those in individual houses or offices it may be possible for one to
remember every item in the collection and where it could be located. However, when the collection
grows to about 2500 or more items a guide to the materials present in the collection becomes
important, hence the need to have a catalogue. In essence, a catalogue is a guide to the materials
presents in the collection so that the retrieval of any material could be easy when needed.
Functions of Cataloguing
 According to Cutter, Rules for a Dictionary catalogue (Fourth Ed, 1904) Enable the user
to find a Book of which either the author, the Tittle and the Subject is known. In practice
two are needed: author + title, or author + subject, or title + subject. Which the increased
availability of the keywords as identifying elements in online searches, it is no longer
necessary to know the first word of an author, title or the subject heading.
 To show what the library has by a given author, on a given subject and in a given kind of
Literature. This has caused and continues to cause endless confusion in catalogues. Many
author use or are known by variants on their name (James John Peter; John Peter, J; J. J
Peter; even J. J. P) or even by two or more completely different names ( Anthony Eden;
Earl of Avon). The catalogue that sets out to fulfil these functions is called collocative or
Bibliographic catalogue. All catalogue offer a subject approach. “On a given subject” is
delight-fully simple phrase, implying that the subject of a published item can be adequate
summed up in a single word or short phrase. The catalogue are mostly well equipped to tell
the user if the book is prose or poetry.
 Enable the user to gain access to an Item present in a collection through multiple access
point such as an author, a title or a subject. In computerized catalogue, more access points
may be provided, such as the edition number, publisher name, date of publication, place of
publication, ISBN(International standard Book Number)
 Provide a complete bibliographic description of every item in a library collection which
can be accessed by author, title, subject or any other access point.
 Assisting users to make a choice of a documents as a regards the edition. Because material
are already organised well in a collection.
 Enabling users to locate an items present in a collection on the shelves, For example, If the
items has not borrowed by a user or misshelved or stolen from the Library.
According to Aina, L.O (2004) Cataloguing is the process of preparing catalogue entries.
Cataloguing consists of two types.
i. Descriptive cataloguing is that type of cataloguing which providing the bibliographic
description using the elements present in the document to describe it. It concerned with the
characterization of the each document using elements that are taken from the physical
make-up of each documents in a collection access point. In a College of 2000 students,
each student would have his/her unique record. This is possible because of certain elements
that can be used to describe each student, such as name, sex, nationality, programme of
study, year of entry, identification number, etc. It is similarly, possible foe every document
to have its unique record, if elements such as author, title, edition, name of publisher, date
of publication, place of publication, ISBN(International Standard Book Number) are used.
By using the above description in every documents it called the Bibliographic record of the
document or the Bibliographic entry, and this how the Description cataloguing is about.
ii. Subjective cataloguing is that part of the bibliographic record which provides the subject
headings of the documents as well as classification number. Subject cataloguing deals
mainly with the provider of the subject headings through the subject analysis of a document
and assigning classification codes. Most users of large library approach the catalogue
without any author or the title in mind, rather they use the subject to gain access to
documents in a collection. Catalogue entries, as already stated, are surrogates or substitutes
of the original document; hence there must be an appropriate subject access point. The user
to locate a document on the shelve, the location where it can be found has to be provided
in the cataloguing entry, hence a notation taken from a classification schedule is usually
given for each document. This number provides for the location of the document on the
shelves or whatever storage medium used.
Three basic elements of cataloguing are
i. Title
ii. Classified/Imprint
iii. Author
Title
Title is the most important identifying feature of the book and may not be left out. This is
especially true in the computerized catalog where title is the principal identifying feature. Title is
among the Elements of catalogue, generally most items in a library have the title. They can also
have the Subtitle, it means a portion of the entire name of the book which is considered by the
author or publisher to be secondary to the principal name of the book, is primarily useful in
identifying editions beginning with the first. Or Subtitle is the title that qualified the title proper or
even a parallel title especially when the title appears in another language. This area also indicates
the person or body responsible for producing the intellectual content of a document. At the time a
book is cataloged, it is safest to assume that sometime in the future another edition will be
published.
Classified/Imprint
Imprint is a feature of identification necessary to distinguish editions, but most likely unnecessary
to distinguish between different works. In the system that does not require identification of
editions, publisher may be added on the basis of conflict; that means supposing a library already
has a title identical with a different book, then imprint would be cited. Classified/Imprint this is
the elements of cataloguing this is an arrangement of catalogue by classification number depicting
the subject heading of the document which will be chosen from the standard classification schedule
and the author number, which is generally the first three letters of the main entry heading of a
document. However it may not be useful to user since the arrangements presupposes that all users
are familiar with the classification scheme used in the Library.
Author
Author, is the person or organization that wrote or compile the document. Example is Aina L.O
(2004) is the person who wrote the book Title “library and Information Science Text for Africa”,
every item in a collection needs to be provided a bibliographic description such as the author of
the book, this description will enable the user to retrieve and locate the information source desired
from the library collection. In cataloguing the author is very important because the entry of a
document in a cataloguing serves as a surrogate of that document. Also a user who already has an
idea of the information source will easily identify in the catalogue.
Due to the above point it shows that the elements of Anglo American Cataloguing Rules is still
used up to date in the cataloguing and classification in the Library. All the elements was adopted
of the Librarian like Anthony Panizzi, Charles Jewett and Charles Ammit Cutter. If you compile
the ideas of these library you get the Elements which was used by the Anglo American Cataloguing
Rules in all edition of the first and second.
References:
Organizing Knowledge: An Introduction to Managing Access to Information. J Rowley and J
Farrow 3rd Edition (2000)
Library and Information Science Text for Africa, Aina L.O (2004)
Rules for a Dictionary catalogue. (Fourth Ed, 1904) Charles Ammi Cutter
Introduction to technical services for library technicians. (2001) Mary Liu Kao