An item comes into the library, say a book. We have purchased this book, or it came as a gift. The official information identifying the book will be on one of the earliest pages of the book, the title page which has a front and a back (surprise!) or recto and verso in the old language. In modern published books there is a number called the international standard book number (ISBN) which identifies this particular edition of this title by this author. A record has to be created in the catalog that has all of this information including place of publication, publisher, date of publication, height of the item in centimeters, if it has illustrations, pictures, additional materials inserted like CDs or DVDs, sometimes the table of contents is included along with general subjects covered in the book. The subjects are selected from an official list of subjects by the person who has read through the book. Sometimes you can find all of this information on the verso page in what is called the “Cataloging in Publication” at the bottom of the page.
Books, of course, are not the only things found in online library catalogs. DVDs and many other type materials are also found
there as well, and the location with the fullest amount of information for their record ( and your bibliographic citations) can be found on the
back of the box at the bottom. Title, publisher, place of publication, date of publication, date of release of the film, main stars, the
director, size of disc, type of DVD, length of films, information about additional material. Sometimes more information can be found in the
leaflets in the box. This information becomes important when you are looking for a particular version of a film. Sometimes only by watching the
film, can you find out what the film is about; this is, its subject or topic. (too bad, pass the popcorn.)
Materials are organized in the catalog in the order in which they were entered. But they can be sorted, filtered and reorganized
using the public catalog software’s searching and limiting features.
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