Introduction

Bibliographic information organization is the process of taking metadata about pieces of information such as books and journal articles, standardizing the metadata into a common format to act as a stand-in for the original information, and organizing the metadata to support information seeking needs. Enough metadata must be retained for the information seeker to evaluate whether the full piece of information will meet their need. This organizational process was originally documented by Hagler (Hagler, 1997; cited by Joudrey & Taylor, 2018) in the specific context of books, while Joudrey and Taylor (2018) expand the definitions to encompass pieces of information more broadly. There are six essential steps for cataloging information resources for collections useful to users seeking that information.

The Six Functions

Keep track of newly created information resources

Information collections are rarely static. Fields as new as quantum physics to those as old as prehistoric archeology are continually making new discoveries, collecting new data, producing new analyses, and drawing new conclusions. In order to ensure that the collection remains relevant to its users, curators must continually seek out and evaluate additional information resources to add to their collections. This may take the form of reviewing journal article submissions, following field leaders on social media, examining lists of newly published books from vendors, or following a university department’s RSS feed.

Examine the individual components of composite resources

In some cases, information resources may be small collections in themselves. Compound works may take the form of a journal issue with multiple articles, or a photograph collection documenting an event through the lens of multiple photographers. The cataloger’s task in such cases is to understand the individual pieces of information within the collection as independent entities in addition to their collective identity; for instance, identifying the photographers who captured the photos and their individual subjects. In this way, the cataloger can make more informed decisions about whether to include individual works or the whole resources when creating collections.

Group related information into collections

Once the resources have been evaluated, the next step for the organizer is to determine whether the identified piece of information is relevant to the collections they are creating. For instance, when collecting resources on the topic of computer science, an Introduction to Java textbook might be appropriate to add to the Freshman Core collection, while Advanced algorithms and complexity analysis would be too advanced for that user demographic. Both might be placed in the Computer Science collection, but neither would be appropriate for a collection created for the psychology department. The decision to include certain works establishes the boundary of the collection, which helps to clarify its purpose and intended use by the served community.

List the contents of the collection in a standardized way

Once the items have been selected for inclusion, they need to be added to the list of the collection’s contents in a format appropriate for use. For instance, a professor compiling a list of required texts for a course may choose to use a human-readable format commonly used within their field such as APA7. A cataloger adding items to the department’s internal library might use a machine-readable format like MARC (MAchine Readable Cataloging) to make loading the list into a computer system easier. Having the items listed can make it easier to understand the collection as a whole, and is necessary for answering questions such as “Is this title within the collection?” Using a citation standard will help a human or a computer understand the record contents being presented, leading to better usability.

Add secondary and subjective annotations

Once the metadata about a resource has been added to the list, it’s helpful to annotate it with additional information relevant to the collection. That may mean assigning the work a specific unique name in the collection, adding topic or subject headings from a controlled vocabulary, and linking the entry to similar works. Normalization may also take place, for example noting the collection’s accepted standard spelling of an author’s name and linking it to variations seen in different works by the author. These steps help improve the user’s ability to locate records of interest to them, and help the work become part of the collection in a cohesive way. Standardizing values and creating references between variations and similar works largely completes the initial work of adding a resource to the collection. Additional updates may be required after the item is added, such as the inclusion of a subsequent edition, or when allowing users to add folksonomy keyword tags.

Provide access to the metadata in a useful way

Once the records are fleshed out, the last step is the handoff between the cataloger and the information seeker. Whether using an OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog) or a bibliography printed in a syllabus, having the records will only be useful to the user if it’s possible to locate the original piece of information referenced by the stand-in. Users need a way of accessing the standardized records that the cataloger has produced, and then de-referencing those records to obtain the original piece of information the user desires. That may mean that records for a physical item in a library have their location included in their metadata (e.g. located 2nd floor non-fiction, DDC 811/.6) while online records may have a uniform resource identifier like http://www.oclc.org/bibformats. 

Conclusion

The work of catalog maintenance and bibliographic control doesn’t end, because new information is constantly being produced. The tasks involved in bibliographic information organization require a range of skills from resource identification and differentiation, to evaluation of appropriateness, to encoding primary information identification like title and author, and secondary information like subject headings and related works, to resource location information, and search functionality. All of the steps must be implemented continually to ensure that the collection remains relevant, accessible, and useful to its target audience.

References

Hagler, R. (1997). The bibliographic record and information technology. Chicago: American Library Association.

Joudrey, D. & Taylor, A. (2018). The Organization of information, 4th ed. Libraries Unlimited.