Library and Information Science

To obtain complete approval of any new system is not an easy task. Returning from the I.F.L.A. International Conference on Cataloguing Principles, held in Paris 1961, 1 participated in the revision of Nippon Cataloging Rules, in accordance with the Statement of Principles adopted by the Conference. The Japan Library Association's Committee for Revision, under the chairmanship of Mr. S. Sekino, discussed the matter thoroughly through July 6th, 1964. The draft was brushed up and published in May 1965. We are endeavoring to make the new rules popular in Japanese library circles. The approval and adoption of, or the transfer to, the new system seems to be a very slow process. The National Diet Library, in which we have four representatives as committee members, has not yet decided to adopt the new rules and still catalogues under the N.C.R., 1952 edition.

This August in Copenhagen, at the International Meeting of Cataloguing Experts, an examination and discussion of a document entitled “Bibliographical Data in National Bibliography Entries” by Mr. M. Gorman is scheduled. He proposes a set of procedures in his report. He expects the set will work satisfactorily and the discussion will result in wide acceptance. As a teacher of cataloguing, I am much interested in the survey and the analysis that Mr. Gorman has completed with eight national bibliographies. Assuming that the compilers of the Japanese national bibliographies are going to adopt the Nippon Cataloging Rules, there are a few slight differences in form of entries to Mr. Gorman's proposal. Punctuation and the use of parentheses sometimes differ. The full address of the publisher, pagings 2–3 volume works, price and the number of copies printed, are not mentioned in the Rules themselves. Accordingly, we have no fixed field for such information. We can, however, add such information, if necessary. Locale and printer are mentioned in our new rules, but the consideration of the practical-minded cataloguers is causing us to change the sentence with the restrictive phrase “in the case when publisher is not known” instead of “considered necessary”. In special cases, where publisher and printer both are needed, we prefer rather to note locale and printer in “note”.

The points to be stressed in this article are as follows: I.F.L.A. Principles on Cataloguing in the choice of the heading for entries is becoming accepted in the library world. This was, however, not quickly and easily achieved, but took at least several decades, I am not confident that we can extend our international acceptance even in describing or specifying of library materials. In saying this, I am not denying the possibility of a multilateral agreement among countries interested in computerized information retrieval; by discussing “in what forms data elements of materials should be recorded in machine-readable retrieval system,” some agreement might be reached among the interested countries regarding intelligibility, though they are using different letters and languages. So long as we rely on the judgement of our eyes, ears and intelligence, it is safe and wise to respect the conventional usage of each language. Differences between two languages are often stronger than the distance between the earth and moon. If the entries are arranged according to national usage, not by letter but phonetically, it might affect the other procedures and operation. I think it is not yet time to apply the proposal on international agreement to include a description of library materials.