Relevance of Cataloguing Principles to the Online Environment: An Historical and Analytical Study

This thesis aims to investigate the relevance, i.e., the validity and adequacy, of current cataloguing principles to the online environment. The major research methods used are an historical and an analytical study of cataloguing concepts and principles. From an historical perspective, the concepts and principles underlying the development of cataloguing codes over the last one hundred and fifty years will be explored. The study also investigates the possible influence of the physical forms of catalogues on the design of cataloguing codes, particularly in the Anglo-American tradition. Following the historical review, a comparison of online catalogues and card catalogues reveals that, in terms of the creation, manipulation and search/retrieval/display of bibliographic information, there are major differences in the two environments and that these differences affect cataloguing standards. The comparison also reveals that online catalogues and the data they give access to are now less controlled by either cataloguers or cataloguing standards than in the past card catalogues. These background studies emphasise the need for a re-assessment of past cataloguing concepts. The results of the study of bibliographic entities and the governing fundamental concepts in the bibliographic universe indicate that these concepts, and basically the relationships between entities, are independent of the catalogue environment. A functional analysis of the bibliographic record (as a surrogate of entities) indicates that, while catalogue records could have wider uses and applications in the online environment, their functionality and effectiveness depend on factors such as comprehensiveness of different data elements for inclusion (i.e., a fuller level of description), better treatment of their relationships to other records and consistency in their indexing for useful searching, retrieval and display.