S. K. Sangma – författare

Librarians and information professionals are faced up at present by fast changing environment and the pace of technology. The main aspects to this change are new technologies and the potential for new services which they bring. At the same time library users and their requirements are also changing. They are now coming with new prospects and take a firm stand on high quality service. On the other hand the range and variety of information sources that librarians now deal with cover print materials, CD-ROMs, online bibliographic databases in different types of formats, electronic journals, digital text supplied from a number of vendors or downloaded from internet. This book is an attempt to appraise the librarians, students of library and information science and others who have no mathematical background and having very little or almost no computer know how, to become cognizant about the basics of new technologies and their applications to various activities in libraries and information centres, so that they can adopt the use of new technologies to their everyday work.

Due to swift growth and development of centralized cooperative bibliographic services and resource sharing, it becomes evident that a standard and foolproof system is required to avoid the mistakes in the process of cataloging. AACR2R and MARC 21 is such standard system, where in AACR2R use in the production of catalogues and the MARC 21 alleviate the exchange of bibliographic and concerned information. MACR 21 support the revised rules of AACR2R for incorporating resources both in print (loose-leaves) and electronic format. This book aims to maintain the tradition established by AACR2 and MARC 21 and attempts to satisfy the same aims that is to furnish a clear and comprehensive overview of modern cataloging theory, policy and practice and to provide a depth description of different fields of AACR2R into MARC21.

A rearrangement of the cataloging rules is not the right starting point for libraries. The library catalog has undergone considerable change from a simple finding list to an integrated database that serves both library management and user access functions. For the most part, it continues to be limited to the holdings of a designated library or group of libraries. Prior to elaborating detailed cataloging rules for libraries, we need to decide whether the user will view a general bibliographic tool that connects users and information resources no matter their origin, or continue to view a library inventory, that requires users to look elsewhere for other information they might need. In parallel, we need a concerted effort to work with interested non-library communities to apply principles of systems analysis to define the functional requirements and use cases that can assist in focusing the general principles and general rule development for bibliographic description. Structuring this effort using a proven approach should allow some useful examination of the assumptions that hobble us as we attempt to move forward. This book explains the correct rules in library science.