These three volumes report the content of the last three of five meetings arranged by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) for cataloging experts from different regions of the globe to discuss revisions to the Statement of Principles adopted by IFLA in 1961, better known as the Paris Principles.1Statement of Principles Adopted by the International Conference on Cataloguing Prin-ciples, Paris, October 1961, www.d-nb.de/standardisierung/pdf/paris_principles_1961.pdf (accessed August 16, 2009). This revision included both the Paris Principles and its accompanying glossary. The first two meetings in the series were held in Frankfurt, Germany, in 2003 and Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 2004. The revised document that resulted from these expert deliberations was edited by John Hostage and was published in multiple translations on the IFLA website in 2009 (www.ifla.org/en/publications/statement-of-international-cataloguing-principles).

The historical nature of these meeting documents is clear, but the format of the meetings makes for a significant amount of repetition. Each volume contains a version of three presentation papers on IFLA’s International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) Programme, Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR), and the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF). The volume for meeting 5 contains versions of a number of background papers that also appeared in the volume for meeting 2. The content of these papers is sometimes updated from volume to volume, and sometimes just rearranged. There also are regional translations in each volume for each section (Arabic for meeting 3; Chinese, Japanese, and Korean for meeting 4; and French and Portuguese for meeting 5). Each of the presentation and background papers provides a lucid and well-informed overview of its topic, but this content does not vary significantly from volume to volume.

More interesting are the country reports. Each volume includes reports from one or more of the countries represented—one report for meeting 3, seven for meeting 4, and nine for meeting 5. Together these reports provide a kaleidoscopic view of the challenges being faced by librarians in the Middle East, Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. In some cases country representatives use the report as an opportunity for local recommendations. Dina Isyanti of the National Library of Indonesia presents detailed recommendations for the revising the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd ed. (AACR2), rules on Indonesian personal name headings.² Tae Soo Kim of Yonsei University in Korea explains Korea’s decisions not to use main entries and to move toward postcoordinated subject access. V. K. Fosu of Ghana and, ’Mabafokent Makara of Lesotho provide wry accounts of the difficulties faced by librarians in their countries. Together, these reports provided the clearest evidence of the regional differences that made the series of meetings necessary.

The outcome of each meeting’s deliberations is represented in several ways. Each volume includes a marked-up version of the Statement of Principles and glossary showing the changes made at the meeting reported. Barbara Tillett provides a summary in each volume of the positions taken by the representatives on each point at the preceding meetings. Each volume also includes the reports of the meeting’s working groups for a common set of five topics: personal names, corporate bodies, seriality, uniform titles and General Materials Designations (GMDs), and multipart items. However, the working notes tend to be sketchy, and there is relatively little interaction between the positions taken or detailed development of arguments for or against them. When it comes to revising the Statement of International Cataloguing Principles, consensus rules.

These volumes are numbers 29, 32, and 35 in the IFLA Series on Bibliographic Control, and also are available as e-books from K.G. Saur. Additional information about the series of IFLA Meetings of Experts on an International Cataloging Code can be found on the website of the IFLA Cataloguing Section under IME-ICC (www.ifla.org/en/node/576)