Fulfilling the Second Objective in the Online Catalog: Schemes for Organizing Author and Work Records into Usable Displays

Abstract

An analysis of the requirements of the second objective of the catalog shows that it has two components, a retrieval component and a display component, and that it may be interpreted broadly to include related works and works about a work or author. Two schemes are investigated for their contributions to the creation of online catalog displays that meet second objective requirements. First, the catalog filing rule scheme is analyzed to show that author and work displays in card catalogs have been composed of many groups or classes of materials that may also be used to create organized displays in online catalogs. The groups used, in the filing rule scheme are based on relationships among items. Second, a scheme based on Tillett’s bibliographic relationship taxonomy is proposed to discover additional types of relationships that may be used to group records in online catalog displays. Finally, a new scheme for the creation of organized displays in online catalogs is proposed. It incorporates elements from both the filing rule scheme and the bibliographic relationship taxonomy to create displays that meet the requirements of the second objective more fully than either scheme does alone.