What in the World … Cataloging on an International Scale

Introduction Two important events in the field of cataloging occurred in the fall of 1997: the International Conference on the Principles and Future Development of AACR, which was held in Toronto in October, and the completion of the IFLA Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records. The final report of the IFLA Study Group on the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records was approved by the Standing Committee of the IFLA Section on Cataloguing in September. These events and the focus on international librarianship that was planned for the 1998 ALA Conference gave impetus to the preconference What in the World... Cataloging on an International Scale. Dorothy McGarry, who was then chair-elect of the Cataloging and Classification Section (CCS) of ALCTS, suggested the theme of the preconference. The original intent was for CCS and the CCS Cataloging Committee: Description and Access (CC:DA) to present a program that featured presentations on the Toronto Conference and the IFLA Functional Requirements. At the 1997 ALA Midwinter Meeting in Washington, D.C., CC:DA agreed to sponsor the program with CCS, and Joan Swanekamp, chair of CC:DA, appointed the following committee members to the task force: Daniel W Kinney, State University of New York at Stony Brook (chair); Brad L. Eden, North Harris Montgomery Community College District; Lynne Howarth, Faculty of Information Studies, University of Toronto; Laurel Jizba, Portland State University; Glenn Patton, OCLC; Cecilia Sercan, Cornell University; Barbara Tillett, Library of Congress; Patricia Vanderberg, University of California, Berkeley; and Martha Yee, University of California, Los Angeles. So much was happening in cataloging at the international level that the CC:DA task force members found that they needed a large block of time to cover the essential aspects of the topic. When the program was proposed to the ALCTS Program Committee, the committee asked CC:DA to develop a pre-conference instead of a program. The CCS Executive Committee agreed to the preconference, but requested a summary program so that ALA members who were unable to attend the preconference would be able to hear brief reports on the Toronto conference and other international cataloging issues. The summary program was presented the day after the preconference during the ALA Annual Conference. What in the World... Cataloging on an International Scale was held at the Washington Hilton, Washington, D.C., on June 26, 1998, from 8:00 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. CC:DA chair Daniel W Kinney was the moderator. The preconference consisted of nine formal papers and a panel discussion with questions from the audience. Barbara Tillett moderated the panel. The preconference was a joint presentation of CCS and CC:DA. It was cosponsored by the ALA International Relations Roundtable, the ACRL Western European Specialists Germanists Discussion Group, the ALCTS/CCS Committee on Cataloging Asian and African Materials, ALCTS/LITA/RUSA MARBI, and the LITA/ALCTS/CCS Authority in the Online Environment Interest Group. ALA president Barbara Ford's theme for the 1998 Annual Conference was Global Reach, Local Touch. A global perspective is familiar to catalogers, as they have long thought in terms of the global library. More than a quarter of a century ago, the theme of the IFLA 1973 conference was Universal Bibliographic Control (UBC). It is an ideal that Jewett put forth almost a century and a half ago in his Smithsonian Catalogue System. Jewett proposed to stereotype the titles of books separately and preserve the plates in alphabetical order. New titles could then be inserted in the proper place and the catalog reprinted. Other libraries could participate in this system by submitting their cataloging records to the Smithsonian to be stereotyped, thus making it possible to publish a general, or union, catalog, which would form a national bibliography. Jewett realized that uniformity was crucial, and that it would be necessary for all libraries cooperating in the program to use the same cataloging rules. …

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