Cataloging Heresy: Challenging The Standard Bibliographic Product

by Bella Hass Weinberg (Editor)

Paperback

First published February 1, 1993

Reviews

[Shomeret]

This is a collection of papers some of which were read at a Congress for Librarians in 1991 on the subject of the problems they were having with the Library of Congress cataloging. One of them is by Sanford Berman, whose classic study on bias in cataloging was my previous read. There was also a response from John Byrum, head of the Descriptive Cataloging Division at the Library of Congress which discusses their process. There were a number of interesting articles. The most radical one by Norman Anderson appeared to be in favor of dumping controlled vocabulary in favor of what he calls a smorgasbord menu of alternative subject headings. Now that truly is cataloging heresy!