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FOR CATALOGUERS, and librarians generally, 1967 will prove to be a vintage year, the annus mirabilis for the cataloguer, with the publication in January of the American text of the new Anglo‐American Code. The British text is expected to be published in November. The availability in this country of the American text gives some little time for a preview of the British version. The profession has had ample warning; the new code has had a long gestation period. For the Americans, especially, it is the culmination of many years of effort, from their preliminary second edition of the 1908 code in 1941, through the second edition of 1949, the Library of Congress Rules for Descriptive Cataloging of the same year, the Lubetzky Report of 1953, the Draft Code of 1960, to the Paris Principles of 1961. The present code owes very much to its predecessors, particularly the Paris Principles, which were in effect a set of guidelines agreed on internationally to ensure broad international consistency between any future national codes without spelling out the detailed rules. Except for one or two instances the new code follows the Paris Principles closely.

Purpose — This chapter uniquely addresses the topic of introducing a common set of cataloguing rules throughout Europe. While no such development is on the immediate horizon, there are signs that current trends are moving towards that possibility. At first glance, this may appear a trivial development in that ‘European’ standards in many areas are in place and not a source of contention, but in cataloguing, this is not the case.

Design/methodology/approach — The main method used for the research was an in-depth literature review. To gauge the current state of European interest in RDA, an email survey was performed in August 2011, of all the European members of the Standing Committee of the Cataloguing Section of the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA), and all the European speakers at the ‘RDA in Europe: making it happen!’ conference. This sample was chosen as being those individuals who would be most able to give a view from Europe on current cataloguing developments.

Findings — There is considerable interest throughout Europe regarding RDA and harmonising cataloguing codes, but there may be conceptual problems in that some European national cultures may diverge significantly from a core of rules based on English-speaking countries.

Originality/value — This chapter combines in-depth analysis of the proposed new cataloguing code Resource Description and Access (RDA), which will be adopted by English-speaking countries with a novel perspective relating to its adoption in non-English-speaking countries in Europe.

Considers relevance of AACR to on‐line library catalogues. Surveys the history of cataloguing rules in relation to the code′s relevance in the state of librarianship at the time. Stresses the need for a code taking account of the actual and potential benefit of computerized catalogues and discusses various relevant aspects.

VINE is produced at least four times a year with the object of providing up‐to‐date news of work being done in the automation of library housekeeping processes, principally in the UK. It is edited and substantially written by Tony McSean, Information Officer for Library Automation based in Southampton University Library and supported by a grant from the British Library Research and Development Department. Copyright for VINE articles rests with the British Library Board, but opinions expressed in VINE do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the British Library. The subscription to VINE is £17 per annum and the period runs from January to December.

The nature and purpose of the catalogue has been the focus of considerable and vigorous debate during the past decade. This article attempts to identify those topics which have been the most significant causes of the debate and discusses: the need for catalogues; users and non‐users; the nature of the bibliographic record and catalogue entry; the development of UK and LC MARC; standards, including exchange formats, the development of the ISBD, and the concept of UBC (Universal Bibliographic Control); the Anglo‐American Cataloguing Rules and the controversy over the implementation of AACR2; COM catalogues; subsets of the MARC record; co‐operatives, networks and resource sharing; and the development of subject access methods better suited to COM and online catalogues. The relevance of catalogue research activities at Bath University and elsewhere is highlighted.

The International Conference on Cataloguing Principles was held after more than a decade of widespread and intensive study of cataloguing theory and practice. Only in the two periods preceding the formulation of Panizzi's Rules and the Joint Code have cataloguing problems bulked so large in the discussions of librarians and never have so many professional minds given so much time to the study of these problems. It is disappointing that after so much effort the practical results of all these labours are still in the future and that whilst we wait for a new code, thousands of admittedly unsatisfactory entries are made each year in thousands of library catalogues.

A survey was made by questionnaire of cataloguing and classification in fifty‐one university libraries. The returned questionnaires revealed many, differences in the classification systems, cataloguing codes, and filing rules used, as well as in the kind and amount of detail in a catalogue entry. There were wide variations in the estimates by libraries of the annual output of a hypothetical ‘average’ cataloguer. There was little uniformity in the statistical data collected by libraries of the work of their cataloguing departments. Little use was made of existing centralized cataloguing services and reasons for this are suggested. More study of user's catalogue needs is necessary. The problems of standardization must be resolved if mechanized techniques are to be fully exploited.

The purpose of this paper is to make a systematic review of the library metadata development history listing out the most significant landmarks and influencing events from Thomas Bodley's rules to the latest BIBFRAME architecture, compare their significance and suitability in the modern-day Web environment.

Four time divisions were identified, namely pre-1900 era, 1900–1950, post-1950 to pre-Web era and post-Web era based on pre-set information available to the authors regarding catalogue rules. Under these four divisions, relevant information sources regarding the purpose of the study were identified; various metadata standards released at different times were consulted.

Library catalogue standards have undergone transitive changes from one form to another primarily influenced by the changing work environment and different forms of resource availability in libraries. Modern-day metadata standards are influenced by the opportunities provided by the World Wide Web towards libraries and work as a suitable base for data organisation at par with Semantic Web standards.

Information organisation processes have gone towards a more data-centric approach than earlier document-centric nature in current Semantic Web environment. Libraries had to make a move in this process, and modern-day guidelines in this regard bring the possibility of large-scale discovery services through curated information resources.

The study discovers relationships between key events in the course of development of metadata standards and provides suggestions and predictions regarding it's future developments.

VINE is produced at least four times a year with the object of providing up‐to‐date news of work being done in the automation of library housekeeping processes, principally in the UK. It is edited and substantially written by the Information Officer for Library Automation based in Southampton University Library and supported by a grant from the British Library Research and Development Department. Copyright for VINE articles rests with the British Library Board, but opinions expressed in VINE do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the British Library. The subscription for VINE is £17 per annum and the period runs from January to December.