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Cataloging Rules
Archivists and other librarians now almost universally catalogue materials according to the second edition of Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR2). These rules grew out of a cooperative venture on the part of the American Library Association and the British Library Association to create a standard format, an effort which produced the first edition in 1967. In keeping with the library orientation of its parent bodies, AACR1 gave short shrift to nonbook materials and the British and American editions differed. To make matters worse, two years after AACR1, the International Meeting of
AACR2 requires a great deal of study before a prospective cataloguer may implement the rules. The difficult organization of materials contributes to the steep learning curve. The first chapter of the book sets out in forty extremely dense pages "General Rules for Description." With these rules in mind, the cataloguer must then consult one of twelve other chapters for specific material-based formats ranging from the expected "Books, Pamphlets, and Printed Sheets" and "Manuscripts" to "Machine-Readable Data Files" and "Three Dimensional Artefacts and Realia." The formats comprise the first part of the book; "Headings, Uniform Titles, and References" concludes it. This final section must be consulted for proper forms for a wide variety of personal, geographic, and corporate names. Cataloguers unfamiliar with the formats find themselves constantly leaping about from the general rules to the specific and thence to the prescriptions for name forms.[6]
AACR2 confronts the user with an unfamiliar, sometimes exotic technical vocabulary. For example, instead of the familiar term "author," AACR2 uses the unwieldy but perhaps more precise "statement of responsibility." For articles or other materials appearing in larger printed formats, the cataloguer must consult a section entitled "'In' Analytics" under a chapter entitled "Analysis." If two authors are responsible for the work, the first author is indexed under the category of "Main Entry" and the other under "Added Entry."
The formats themselves may confuse first-time users. For example, an entry for a piece of correspondence contains, in order, the type of document (e.g., letter, telegram), the date composed (in year-month-day format), the place of composition, the name of the recipient, the recipient's location, a back slash, the author's name, a dash, the number of pages, a semi-colon, the size, another dash, and then the physical description (e.g., typescript or holograph). A typical entry might read, with editorial interpolations (brackets): "[Letter, 1931?] Dec. 20 [Paris, to] Emma [Goldman, St. Tropez?] / Peggy [Guggenheim]. — 2 p. ; 30 X 21 cm. — Typescript signed (photocopy)." For those unfamiliar with the format, it takes a while to hunt down the author and to sort out the place of writing from the destination of the correspondence. The elimination of back-to-back bracketing may easily lead the reader to suspect that "Goldman" may be a sub-unit of the municipality of St. Tropez. And it takes a long time to become accustomed to leaving spaces before colons and semi-colons or to using the period, space, dash, space (i.e., ".—") as a subsection delimiter.
Formats differ from one another in which the order of data elements appear. For example, in the case of correspondence, the date of composition
Data element order differs even within the same format as in the case of manuscript speeches. A typical entry would read: "[Speech, before A Mass Meeting to Promote Local, State, and Public Works for the Unemployed, Union Square, New York] / Emma Goldman. — [1893 Aug. 21]." Here, in the same format as correspondence, the date comes after the author, not before, as with correspondence. Great differences exist in the manuscript format between manuscript volumes, correspondence, speeches and sermons, legal documents, collections of manuscripts, and miscellaneous single manuscripts.
The labyrinthine rules of AACR2 certainly would seem to discourage editors attempting to adopt them, not to mention their processing staffs, if they have them. The Goldman Papers, for example, at first tried to encourage everyone to become familiar with the AACR2 manual; with time it became clear that the manual daunted even the most adventurous of the staff. The staff, instead, streamed into the microfilm editor's office, presumably thinking that he had the final word on the manual. It soon became clear that a usable interpretation of the AACR2 was necessary. Some of the more common AACR2 formats were written directly into the project's data entry program. The microfilm editor wrote other of the more exotic rules into the project's data processing manual and he finally became resigned to acting as the final authority for interpreting the rules.
In short, because of the complexity of AACR2—much greater than MLA or Chicago style manuals—documentary editors will probably only be able to adopt the rules if they can boil them down for their own purposes. Because editions usually have so many documents in the same format, this should not present very many problems. But, of course, nearly every project must deal with stray documents in highly unusual formats. To meet this eventuality, someone in the office will have to specialize in knowing the AACR2 manual, or at least be familiar enough with it to solve expeditiously any problems that may come up.
One may well ask after this discussion: is it worth the time and effort to use AACR2? Certainly operating under the rules takes much more thought and care than working with other style manuals; editors will have to spend at least twenty-five per cent more time entering data or filling out cards. Those projects preparing printed editions will also face the formidable task of getting AACR2 material into either the MLA or Chicago footnote and bibliography forms. Nevertheless, AACR2 promises to give projects the chance to put their material on-line in some future national data base. The point of most editions has been to create a definitive work that will last for
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