Information Organization: Internet Resources

Internet Resources of Use in Information Organization

General Resource Guides

ALCTS Research Topics in Cataloging and Classification: A Summary of the Literature, 1995-: A good place to start any research about cataloguing issues: produced by the Association for Library and Technical Services, the Cataloging and Classification Section Policy Research Committee.
Cataloger's Reference Shelf: This unbelievably useful site gives WWW access to guides which otherwise take two strong librarians to lift, let alone use.
Cataloguer's Toolbox: This excellent guide is produced by the Cataloguing Department of the Queen Elizabeth II Library at Memorial University in Newfoundland. If you're doing any kind of cataloguing work--whether subject analysis or descriptive cataloguing--I highly recommend bookmarking this site.
Internet Library for Librarians: Cataloging: This is part of a large, useful resource maintained by InfoWorks Technology. The cataloging section is less detailed than the Cataloger's Toolbox, but well-organized.
Technical Services and Related Discussion Lists: This site provides a useful gateway to the main discussion lists used by the cataloguing community. Sign onto AUTOCAT for awhile, and brace yourself for a flood of e-mails. Cataloguers are a bright, funny, VERBOSE bunch.
TECHWeb: Cataloguing Resources: Maintained by Sam Kalb at Queen's University, this guide gives a particularly high profile to sites concerning the National Library of Medicine as well as sites dealing with the Cataloguing of Internet Resources.

Controlled Vocabularies

Controlled Vocabularies: A collection of controlled vocabularies provided by the Queensland University of Technology.
Library of Congess Subject Headings: Principles of Structure and Policies for Application: The Library Corporation, in mounting this guide, assumes that we can only read in little tiny bits of hypertext at a time, so be prepared to click yourself into a frenzy.
Library of Congress Subject Headings: Weekly Updates: Every week, additions and changes are made to the Library of Congress Subject Headings. Browse through, and see how the Library of Congress struggles to keep up with the world.
MDA Archaeological Objects Thesaurus: A controlled vocabulary developed for the field of archaeology.
Medical Subject Headings (MeSH): The largest, and most widely-used vocabulary for indexing medical research literature. If you're doing anything in health-related information research, you'll bump into this vocabulary eventually.
Multilingual Thesaurus on Health Promotion: Produced by the Commission of European Communities, this thesaurus provides a list of health promotion terms in four languages: take a health-related condition and compare the terms with those in MeSH.
NASA Thesaurus: A thesaurus designed for the aerospace industry.
Web Thesaurus Compendium: by Subject: A collection of web-based thesauri developed in a multitude of different subject areas.

Classification Systems

2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: A classification system developed by and for the mathematics community.
Beyond Bookmarks: Schemes for Organizing the Web: A site that consolidates a number of Web resources that organize Web documents according to classification and subject headings schemes.
Dewey Decimal Classification: Home Page: Visit DDC at its home with Forest Press: you'll find an overview of the schedules, as well as links to various DDC-related research projects.
LCC Cutter Table: If you can't get your hands on the hard copy, this will at least enable you to assign book numbers.
Library of Congress Classification Outline: The Outline for the LCC Classification.
Sorting Things Out: Classification and Practice: Sample chapters from the book by Bowker and Star, on the way classification infiltrates the way we make sense of the world.

Cataloguing Standards

Bicentennial Conference on Bibliographic Control for the New Millenium: The program, with summaries, of an upcoming conference hosted by the Library of Congress: gives a good indication of the future concerns for descriptive cataloguing, particularly in the electronic environment.
Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records: IFLA's influential contribution to cataloguing theory and practice in an international environment.
Joint Steering Committee for Revision of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules: Here, at the nitty-gritty committee level, you'll see the slow, gradual, sometimes painful process whereby an international cataloguing code is updated to conform with other standards, and with the new demands of today's information environment.
Library of Congress Rule Interpretations: We all like to pretend that we're independent-minded cataloguers who never go running to the Library of Congress Rule Interpretations, so access this site from home.
Logical Structure of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules: Part I: Delsey's influential study of the modeling logic behind AACR2R. The PDF file is gigantic, so start with the Introduction.

Authority Control

Authority Control in the 21st Century: An Invitational Conference: A 1996 OCLC conference on authority control: provides a variety of different perspectives on the issue.
Between Control and Chaos: An Ethical Perspective on Authority Control: Hope Olson's influential critique of the whole principle of authority control: it'll make you think twice about the things we do in this business.
LC Authorities (DRA): If you can't get access to OCLC, this is a good source of LC's name and subject authority files.
The Future is Now: Reconciling Change and Continuity in Authority Control: The proceedings of an OCLC conference on authority control, held in 1995.

MARC Standards

MARC 21 Concise Format for Bibliographic Data: A slimmed-down version of MARC 21, which gives you all of the major fields and subfields, with examples.
MARC Standards Office: The home page for LC's documentation on the MARC format.
Understanding MARC Bibliographic: A tutorial designed by the Library of Congress to introduce you to MARC cataloguing.

Cataloguing Special Materials

Archival Moving Image Materials: A Cataloging Manual: LC's instructions for cataloguing motion pictures, news footage, trailers, outtakes, home movies, and just about anything else that flickers.
Cataloging in the Digital Order: David Levy's important and fascinating article, which provides an "outsider's" view on what cataloguing does, and why it matters.
Cataloging Internet Resources: A Manual and Practical Guide: OCLC's guide to the practice of cataloguing Internet resources using AACR2R principles.
CONSER Cataloging Manual: Module 31: The famous "Modue 31" which gives us guidance on cataloguing electronic serials.
Map Cataloging Manual: Library of Congress: Mastering the intricacies of conic equidistant projection isn't as easy as it sounds.
Tools for Serials Cataloguers: A helpful guide for serials cataloguers, designed by Ann Ercelawn at Vanderbilt University.

Metadata Schemes and Generators

DC DOT Dublin Core Metadata Generator: A program for generating Dublin Core Metadata
Dublin Core/MARC Crosswalk: A crosswalk that maps Dublin Core elements to corresponding MARC fields, to facilitate interoperability between different descriptive practices.
GILS: An Overview: The Canadian federal government provides an overview of the Government Information Locator Service (GILS): a metadata set designed specifically for government information.
REGGIE: The Metadata Editor: A useful device for creating metadata according to a variety of schemes.
TEI Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange: The Text Encoding Initiative's Guidelines for the TEI Header: a metadata set designed by the humanities community for electronic text collections.

Cooperative Cataloguing and Consortia

Cooperative Online Resource Catalog (CORC): OCLC's latest entry into the arena of cataloguing electronic resources: a cooperative catalogue which maps between MARC and Dublin Core, in both HTML and XML.
Program for Cooperative Cataloging: An international organization administered largely by the Library of Congress, which aims to promote cooperative cataloguing of high standards worldwide.
Research Libraries Group: A non-profit consortium of libraries and archives and societies, which promotes the interests of its members, and maintains large mutual databases, including RLIN: The Research Libraries Information Network.
WorldCat: The website of the world's largest union catalogue, and the single greatest source of bibliographic records.