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AACR2
Translation Project Webpage Die Deutsche
Bibliothek Bibliographic Records in MARC Format |
The Bibliographic Control Working Group was formed to address the issues of German-language cataloging on a national, indeed an international, level. Bibliographic control provides the organizational infrastructure for the information collected by a library. Working behind the scenes and almost invisible to the user, bibliographic control represents an essential part of library services. It provides a level of assurance that a user can identify and find a needed item in a library, and it also acts as a primary tool for exploration and discovery of a library's holdings. Collection development staff recognize the essential role that bibliographic control plays in providing access to their collections, and so often a close working relationship develops between bibliographers and catalogers. Indeed, in German libraries the bibliographer, or subject specialist, and cataloger are typically the same person. Nonetheless, because of its high cost libraries have found it
increasingly difficult to maintain the necessary levels of support to assure
adequate bibliographic control for their collections. In particular, because
a foreign language is involved, the timely and sufficient cataloging of
German-language materials has suffered noticeably as a result of changing
priorities and tightening budgets. Part of the reason for this is a
temptation among library administrations to give a lower priority to the
cataloging of foreign-language materials, but it also because a high level of
knowledge and expertise is necessary to adequately catalog them. The Bibliographic Control Working Group has been charged to assess and
evaluate the current state of German-language cataloging in North America, to
develop strategies to maximize German-language cataloging expertise on a national
level through knowledge and resource-sharing, and to establish closer ties to
the cataloging community in Germany. The goal of the latter is to work toward
bringing our respective cataloging cultures closer together, and to harmonize
our various rules and practices to allow for more effective sharing of
bibliographic data. |
(Last modified Jan 2004)