College and Research Libraries By HENRY]. DUBESTER, The Catalog-A Finding List? W E AR~ TOLD that as reference li-brarians, with responsibility to make our views known to those con- cerned with code revision, we should ex- amine the alternative functions of the catalog. These alternatives, briefly stated, are between the catalog as a finding list and the catalog as a reference or biblio- graphic tool. . The manner in which the problem IS postulated reminds me of the hist~ry ~£ the so-called "mind-body problem. Phi- losophers at least as early a.s Ari.stotle were concerned with the relatiOnship be- tween the mind and body. They knew that there was a relationship, but were defeated in their efforts to explain ade- quately how the material body could ~£­ feet the non-material mind and VIce versa. As long as the question was pos~d in a manner that assumed the essential difference between mind and body, there could be no effective understanding. Only when scientific reason proceeded to assume that body and mind were the same (mind as an emergent phenome~on of body in a particular state of organiZa- tion) was the necessary ~as is. secu:ed f~r modern scientific investigatiOn In th1s field. Although this is a glaring over-simplifi- cation of a complex problem, a parellel may be drawn to the problem offered to the reference librarian. He is asked to assess the relationship between the cata- log as a finding list and as a reference tool. The essential difference in the nature of the two things is assumed. Is this assump- tion justified? Mr. Dubester is chief of the General Reference and Bibliography Division} Library of .Congress. MARCH} 1957 Problems of Reference Librarian The reference librarian has faced the results of rather practical problems which have confronted the administrators of large libraries. Growing c.atal?~ing costs and growing costs of maintaining large and complex catalogs have required an examination of present practices and a development of hospitality to changes in the accepted way of doing things. The suggestions that have been offe~ed at one time or another would accomplish one or several changes. They would ~implify ~at­ aloging by limitiqg the Infor~~t~on placed on th: catalog .entry o~ by .limiting the research Invested In secunng Informa- tion for the catalog entry; or they would reorganize the catalog in the di:ec.tio~ of eliminating entries. Such eliminatiOn might be through dividing the catalog so that the new parts would be less complex than the structure of the prior whole, or through the withdrawal of ~omo9enous elements with the further IntentiOn of presenting the withdrawn portions in book form; or through combinations and variations of these processes. Invariably, in the face of these sugges- tions the reference librarian confronts a diffic~lt situation·. He or she has accumu- lated experience which has demonstrated the usefulness of some of the information which would henceforth be systematically eliminated from the catalog card or from the catalog. He or she ~as exper~ence with the inner relationships of this so- called "complex structure" which has led to the identification of materials that would otherwise have been missed. The reference librarian is not in a good posi- tion to quantify this experien~e .and to reduce it to the form of a statistical ex- pression. The ·evidence is usually mar- 107 shalled in anecdotal form and as such is subjective, impressionistic, biased, and generally unreliable in this era which places a premium on concrete evidence and statistical fact. Although a considerable literature has evolved concerning approaches toward the resolution of these questions, the essential problem has not been altered appreciably, nor have there been any very significant tests through practical implementation. Significant variations in the structure and in the organization of catalogs and in cataloging practices are found in special libraries and documen- tation centers with their collections of special types of materials, and their ob- ligation to serve a special public wi'th predetermined needs and interests. The general research library, with interests in the arts, sciences, and humanities has re- mained essentially unaffected. The gen- eral research library has, however, ac- cepted the Fhallenge posed by the enor- mous influx of published matter. It has accepted the need to explore the possi- bility of asserting radical changes in pat- terns that are now old enough to be sus- pect by a new generation of librarians who are stimulated by the developments in mechanization and in the ideational content of the broad complex we call "documentation." Nevertheless, the reference librarian, in his day-by-day work of serving a gen- eral public and assisting in providing access to collections embracing bn;> ad fields of knowledge, is holding firm in insisting on the value, merit, and useful- ness of the traditional approaches. He is all but inarticulate, however, in his ef- forts to convince those proposing changes and choices that the old approaches-the full cataloging, the dictionary arrange- ments-have not lost their essential valid- ity. There is good reason to believe that any attempt to dismiss the position of the reference librarian as a narrow effort to forestall the inevitable march of prog- ress will itself prove to be shortsighted in its wider implications. Further Questions Some of the difficulties in rationalizing the arguments, the different interpreta- tions and analysis, and the proposals for choice or change, may be dispelled if fur- ther questions are raised as to the exact meanings and implications of the terms "finding list" and "reference tools" which are used as if all can agree on their defi- nitions. In the context of the arguments, these terms are used in apparent opposi- tion, as if they represent different things and as if the proposed choice between them were a real and actual choice. The reference librarian may properly argue, however, that the distinction is more ap- parent than real, and that the choice is spurious rather than actual. The lack of choice becomes rather ob- vious when it is realized that with respect to the function of the catalog as a finding list the reference librarian has no choice whatsoever. Whatever else it may be or may become, the library's catalog must serve to locate materials in a library's col- lection. If it does not do this, it has only little or occasional value in providing access to the collections. Thus, there is an immediate qualifica- tion to the choice that is offered. The cat- alog must be a finding tool, and if this is accepted one half of the choice is re- moved. What then remains of the other half, the function of the catalog as an ef- fective bibliographic or reference tool? It is at this point that we might assert cate- gorically that in order to serve its finding purpose, the catalog must be a biblio- graphic and reference tool as well; or al- ternatively, that only insofar as the cata- log provides bibliographic or reference information can it function adequately as a finding tool. This can be demonstrated by a closer examination of the meaning of the term "finding tool." Does "finding" mean merely to locate an entry in the catalog when the basic in- 108 COLLEGE AND RESEARCH LIBRARIES ..... I l ~ I · ~ formation required for the proper identi- fication of the item (in accordance with established cataloging practices) is avail- able? Does the finding function of the catalog also include the responsibility to aid in the identification of the item as a precondition of its location in the col- lections? If the first of these alternatives is ac- cepted as defining the finding function we may examine some interesting impli- cations. We may ask, for example, what aspects of the conventional cataloging elements are basic and indispensable for finding. The author entry? Yes, it is in- dispensable. The title? It, too, is indis- pensable. The :edition, imprint, colla- tion, series and bibliographic notes, etc.? Apparently we can do without these, as did the editor of the New York State Li- brary's Checklist of Books and Pamphlets in the Social Sciences/ which was de- signed solely with the finding purpose uppermost. It means, in fact, that, in its reductio ad absurdum} only the author and title have to be known in the manner in which they are entered in the catalog for the desired work to be findable. This, of course, only pinpoints the difficulty which is the common bond of all refer- ence librarians. The author may be known but not the title, or vice versa. The author may be known in a form other than that in which it is entered in the catalog. The work may not be known by author or by title, but rather in its series or other relationships. The experienced reference librarian can multiply these examples in kind and in quantity. We know that not infre- quently the problem of locating a work is not one of having incomplete informa- tion but rather one of having incorrect information. In such instances, the ob- 1. The Checklist of Books and Pamphlets in the Social .S:cMnces, . a 142 -page, two-columned list, aiming at a tttle per lme, was produced in 1956 by means of I.B.M. punched card techniques at the New York State Library m Albany. It provides author, title, imprint date and clas~ number. The . compilation was designed with a spec1fic purpose and m the face of a special need served ?Y t_hat library, and no criticism is here intended or 1mphed. MARCH} 1957 vious prior task to finding is the task of identification. Furthermore, the librar- ian's task is very frequently one of selec- tion according to practically unlimited criteria. This task .is also one which re- quires identification prior to location and normally utilizes some or all of the elements of the conventional fully- cataloged entry. All this is to say that to divorce identi- fication, which entails the exploitation of the total results of the skilled cataloger's enterprise, from finding is to erect an ar- tificial distinction which does not apply in practice. To argue that the published bibliog- raphy can replace the bibliographic func- tion provided by the catalog, in the broadest sense of such proposal, is to ig- ~ore the fact that bibliographic compila- tiOns tend to rely on the very tools that are to be modified. With rare exceptions, bibliographies are compiled in libraries -in libraries with extensive collections and with catalogs which represent these collections in consideration of the differ- ent types of approaches that are usually made to the materials. If libraries were t? limit their cataloging on the assump- tiOn that the finding function is the only proper f~nctio~ of the catalog, ignoring the relatiOnship between identification and finding, and assuming a permanent reliance on published bibliographies, it may be realized to the sorrow of the li- brary profession that a rather circular process has been • engendered which de- nies the information for the development of the tool that is expected to serve in place of the information denied. The reference librarian must also cau- tiously investigate the implications of any decision which in the first place ac- cepts the distinction between the finding and the reference functions of the cat- alog, and secondly asserts that the first has a higher order of preference than the second. It should be recalled that, in its present setting, the problem is raised and 109 stimulated by the attempts to secure cat- .alog code revision. Code revision, for the present, is mainly concerned with the A.L.A. Cataloging Rules-Author and Title} but the recombining of rules for description with rules for author and title entry is indicated for the future. Only in the farther reaches of this enterprise will reconsideration of the rules of descriptive cataloging or a code for subject catalog- ing become matters ·of the moment. We may assume that eventually the latter rules will require renewed attention for the very same reasons that led to revision of the rules for author and title entry, including reasons based on economy, on the need for standardization, and on the need to make practices conform to changes in the environment in which the rules are applied. If the reference librarian concedes that bibliographic information provided in the code for author and title entries is not an aspect of finding materials in the collections of a library through its cata- log, the stage will have been set for the argument that such bibliographic infor- mation is dispensable in the descriptive and subject analysis of this material. In the foregoing we have mentioned the choice confronting the reference li- brarian. No attention has been paid to the most prominent user of the library's catalog-the reader. The reader is not only inarticulate, he is anonymous. He may or may not experience problems in his use of the catalog. If he does, he may or may not seek help from the reference librarian. Conventionally, we have per- mitted the reference librarian to repre- sent the reader, assuming that there is an essential identity between the two. This