Library catalog and Related Topics

OCLC

American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large".

OCLC offices in Leiden (the Netherlands)

Starting in 1971, OCLC produced catalog cards for members alongside its shared online catalog; the company printed its last catalog cards on October 1, 2015.

Collation

Assembly of written information into a standard order.

Collation is a fundamental element of most office filing systems, library catalogs, and reference books.

An index card in a library card catalog. This type of cataloging has mostly been supplanted by computerization.

An index card (or record card in British English and system cards in Australian English) consists of card stock (heavy paper) cut to a standard size, used for recording and storing small amounts of discrete data.

A collection of such cards either serves as, or aids the creation of, an index for expedited lookup of information (such as a library catalog or a back-of-the-book index).

Library of Alexandria

One of the largest and most significant libraries of the ancient world.

Bust excavated at the Villa of the Papyri depicting Ptolemy II Philadelphus, who is believed to have been the one to establish the Library as an actual institution, although plans for it may have been developed by his father Ptolemy I Soter

Map of ancient Alexandria. The Mouseion was located in the royal Broucheion quarter (listed on this map as "Bruchium") in the central part of the city near the Great Harbor ("Portus Magnus" on the map).

According to legend, the Syracusan inventor Archimedes invented the Archimedes' screw, a pump for transporting water, while studying at the Library of Alexandria.

Present-day ruins of the Serapeum of Alexandria, where the Library of Alexandria moved part of its collection after it ran out of storage space in the main building

The Roman general Julius Caesar was forced to set fire to his own ships during the Siege of Alexandria in 48 BC. Many ancient writers report that the fire spread and destroyed at least part of the Library of Alexandria's collections; however, the Library seems to have either at least partially survived or been quickly rebuilt.

This Latin inscription regarding Tiberius Claudius Balbilus of Rome (d. c. AD 79) mentions the "ALEXANDRINA BYBLIOTHECE" (line eight).

Drawing from the Alexandrian World Chronicle depicting Pope Theophilus of Alexandria, gospel in hand, standing triumphantly atop the Serapeum in 391 AD

Hypatia (1885) by Charles William Mitchell, believed to be a depiction of a scene in Charles Kingsley's 1853 novel Hypatia

Illustration by Yahyá al-Wasiti from 1237 depicting scholars at an Abbasid library in Baghdad

Interior of the modern Bibliotheca Alexandrina

Many important and influential scholars worked at the Library during the third and second centuries BC, including, among many others: Zenodotus of Ephesus, who worked towards standardizing the texts of the Homeric poems; Callimachus, who wrote the Pinakes, sometimes considered to be the world's first library catalogue; Apollonius of Rhodes, who composed the epic poem the Argonautica; Eratosthenes of Cyrene, who calculated the circumference of the earth within a few hundred kilometers of accuracy; Aristophanes of Byzantium, who invented the system of Greek diacritics and was the first to divide poetic texts into lines; and Aristarchus of Samothrace, who produced the definitive texts of the Homeric poems as well as extensive commentaries on them.

Screenshot of a Dynix menu. First introduced in 1983, Dynix was one of the first and most popular commercial library automation systems ever released, enjoying nearly twenty years of dominance in libraries worldwide.

Online public access catalog

The online public access catalog (OPAC), now frequently synonymous with library catalog, is an online database of materials held by a library or group of libraries.

The card catalog at Yale University's Sterling Memorial Library

Union catalog

A union catalog is a combined library catalog describing the collections of a number of libraries.

Bibliographies at the University Library of Graz

Bibliography

Traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ).

Paul Otlet, working in an office built at his home following the closure of the Palais Mondial, in June 1937

A library catalog, while not referred to as a "bibliography," is bibliographic in nature.

Library

Collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes.

The Sistine Hall of the Vatican Library.

Poet Laureate Rita Dove's definition of a library at entrance to the Maine State Library in Augusta, Maine, United States

The round reading room of Maughan Library, the main university library of King's College London, London, England

The University Library at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

The Robarts Library at the University of Toronto, Canada

A children's library in Montreal, Quebec, Canada in 1943

Interior of the National Library of Finland in Helsinki, Finland

Raczyński Library, the public library of Poznań, Poland

Bates Hall, the main reading room of the Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Main reading room of the New York City Public Library on 5th Avenue c. 1910–1920

Quaid-e-Azam Library in Bagh-e-Jinnah, Lahore, Pakistan

Bookshelf at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. The top floor contains 180,000 volumes. Since 1977, all new acquisitions are frozen at -33 °F to prevent the spread of insects and diseases.

The Long Room of the Trinity College Library in Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. It is a legal deposit or "copyright library" and is entitled to receive a copy of all books published in the UK.

Library shelves in Hong Kong, showing numbers of the classification scheme to help readers locate works in that section

Butler Library at Columbia University, est. 1759

National Library of India, Kolkata, est. 1836

Until the advent of digital catalogues, card catalogues were the traditional method of organizing the list of resources and their location within a large library.

Reading room at the State and University Library, the national library of Denmark

Dynix was an early, but long-lasting and popular, digital catalogue.

Interior of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Alexandria, Egypt, showing both stacks and computer terminals

Stacks of the José Vasconcelos Library in Mexico City, Mexico

Before the computer age, this was accomplished by the card catalogue—a cabinet (or multiple cabinets) containing many drawers filled with index cards that identified books and other materials.

Francis Ronalds

English scientist and inventor, and arguably the first electrical engineer.

Ronalds' experiment with eight miles of iron wire

Elements of the subterranean electric telegraph built by Francis Ronalds in 1816

The first successful camera for making continuous recordings of scientific instruments, built by Francis Ronalds in 1845. This example is an electrograph measuring atmospheric electricity

He was also already creating what would become the renowned Ronalds Library of electrical books and managing his collection with perhaps the first practical card catalogue.

Anthony Panizzi

Naturalised British citizen of Italian birth, and an Italian patriot.

Anthony Panizzi by Carlo Pellegrini in Vanity Fair

These rules served as the basis for all subsequent catalogue rules of the 19th and 20th centuries, and are at the origins of the ISBD and of digital cataloguing elements such as Dublin Core.