5.4 Cataloguing materials

Cataloguing is a way of describing materials to make them easy to identify and locate. A catalogue describing all the materials in a resource centre is like a key to the collection. It helps users to identify useful materials and know where to find them. Users can look at a catalogue to find out whether the resource centre has a particular publication, or materials by a particular author, or materials on a particular subject.A catalogue contains the following information about each material:authortitle and sub-titleeditionseriesplace of publicationpublisherdate of publicationnumber of pages and formatillustrationssubject (keywords)accession numberclassification numberA catalogue can take various forms, such as a card catalogue (card index) or computer database(see Section 6.8). The easiest system is a card catalogue. Card catalogues are a series of cards, about 12.5cm by 7.5cm (5in by 3in) kept in a box. Card is used because it is stronger than paper, and is easy to write or type on. C...