Historical addressHow a Church Resource Catalogue Works

The Wikipedia page defines a library catalog as a register of all bibliographic items found in a library or group of libraries. A catalog for a group is called a union catalog. An item can be a single book, a computer file, a graphic, a piece of realia, a map, a single novel inside an anthology, a group such as a trilogy, or a webpage linked from the catalog when it is relevant to patrons. For your shelf, that definition matters because a VBS kit with a leader guide, a music disc and craft sheets can be listed once, while each piece remains findable through the same record. The page also describes WorldCat as an international union catalog managed by the nonprofit library cooperative OCLC, with over half a billion records for three billion holdings in January 2021. Your shelf is far smaller, yet the same idea applies. If an item is not found in the catalog, the user may continue searching at another library.

Charles Ammi Cutter set three goals in 1876 after earlier work by Antonio Genesio Maria Panizzi in 1841. A catalog should let a person find a book when the author, the title, the subject or the date of publication is known. It should show what the library holds by a given author, on a given subject or in a given kind of literature. It should assist in the choice of a book with regard to its edition in a bibliographic sense and its character in a literary or topical sense. Later work kept those goals. Lubetzky and the Conference on Cataloging Principles in Paris in 1960 and 1961 produced the Paris Principles, and Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records in 1998 described four user tasks as find, identify, select and obtain. Other names associated with this history are Shiyali Ramamrita Ranganathan and Seymour Lubetzky. When a volunteer remembers only a theme or only a writer, those four access points keep the search short. A short guide to the subject map of a congregational library can help you keep those themes consistent from season to season.

Traditionally there are several kinds of catalogs. An author catalog is sorted alphabetically by authors, editors, illustrators, and similar names. A title catalog is sorted alphabetically by title. A subject catalog is sorted by subject. A dictionary catalog interfiles all author, title, subject and series entries in a single alphabetical order, and it was widespread in North American libraries before computer-based catalogs. A keyword catalog is a subject catalog sorted by keywords. There are also mixed author and title forms, mixed author and title and keyword forms, and systematic catalogs that sort subjects by a systematic subdivision and are also called classified catalogs. If you keep a printed binder or a simple computer list, the dictionary idea is practical. A volunteer can look in one alphabet for a writer, a series name or a topic like prayer, and find the same kit.

A shelf list catalog has entries sorted in the same order as the items stand on the shelf, and it may serve as the primary inventory. That order lets you see gaps, duplicates and missing pieces in a kit. The catalog as a whole serves as an inventory and a record of contents, which helps at the start of Lent or Advent when several groups borrow at once. Paired with plain cataloging basics for congregational shelves, a shelf list gives you a quick count without pulling every box. For background on how these lists developed, see the history of library catalogs from clay tablets to online access. Browsing shows what looks interesting. The shelf list shows what you hold, where it should sit and what has not been returned.

The earliest catalogs were handwritten lists, sometimes inscribed on clay tablets and later written on scrolls of parchment or paper. As codices replaced scrolls, catalogs became handwritten ledgers and in some cases printed books. From the late 18th century through the mid 19th century, paper slips or cards gradually replaced ledgers and books, and in the 20th century the card was ubiquitous for a long time. The card catalog was familiar to library users for generations. The reason was practical. A bound book had to be rewritten or annotated in the margins to add new titles, while a card could be inserted or removed. Ancient practice already pointed that way. By 700 BCE the Assyrians followed rules set down by the Babylonians, and the seventh century BCE library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh was led by Ibnissaru, who prescribed a catalog of clay tablets by subject. Subject catalogs were the rule at that time, author catalogs were unknown, and repeated subject-only practice suggests a code for subject assignment and recording of details. Consistency saved time for the recorder and set expectations for the reader.

The first card catalog appeared in Vienna around 1780, and Gottfried van Swieten introduced it as prefect of the Imperial Library in Austria. Early cards may have been French playing cards, blank on one side in the 1700s. In November 1789 books were collected from religious houses and listed on the backs of playing cards, an inventory known as the French Cataloging Code of 1791. English inventor Francis Ronalds used cards for his own growing book collection around 1815, described as the first practical use of the system. In the mid 1800s Natale Battezzati, an Italian publisher, developed a card system for booksellers with cards for authors, titles and subjects, and soon Melvil Dewey and other American librarians championed the card catalog for its expandability. Before standards, some libraries shelved by size of book and others by author name alone, which made finding a book difficult. The first issue of Library Journal said that the pressing needs were a standardized catalog and an agency for a centralized catalog. An American Library Association committee recommended the 2-by-5-inch Harvard College size used at Harvard and the Boston Athenaeum, then favored a larger card near 3-by-5 inches. By the end of the nineteenth century the larger card won out, partly because 3-by-5-inch was already the postal size used for postcards.

Uniform cards needed uniform furniture and numbers. Dewey looked beyond cards and equipped library operations through a Supplies Department in the American Library Association, later a stand-alone company called the Library Bureau. Its early distribution catalog said that no other business had been organized with the express purpose of supplying libraries. It focused on machine-cut index cards with trays and cabinets, then sold tables, chairs, shelves, display cases, date stamps, newspaper holders, hole punchers and paperweights. Dewey and others organized books by subject, then alphabetized by author name. Each book received a call number that identified subject and location, with a decimal point dividing sections, and the number on the card matched a number written on the spine. In 1860 Ezra Abbot placed cards on their edges between two wooden blocks so the file stayed in order and stayed secure, published the plan in the library annual report for 1863, and many American libraries adopted it. Work on that file began in 1862 and produced 35,762 catalog cards within the first year on 2-by-5-inch cards in Harvard College size. In 1908 the young American Library Association set card size standards that standardized the manufacture of cards and cabinets.

Computerized cataloging developed gradually from the mid-20th century and by the late-20th and early-21st century it had mostly replaced card catalogs. The web brought ubiquitous online public access catalogs, often called OPACs, though some people still informally call the online catalog a card catalog. For almost a century, from 1901 to 1997, the Library of Congress printed and sold copies of its catalog cards to libraries in the United States, which reduced duplication of work. OCLC, a major supplier, printed its last card in October 2015. Some libraries with OPAC access still keep card catalogs on site as a secondary file that is seldom updated, sometimes with a sign giving the last year of filing. Some removed cards to make room for shelving, and old cabinets were resold because people enjoy using them for storing personal effects at home. Your shelf can follow the same path in miniature. Keep one current list online or on paper, mark its date clearly, and retire duplicate files that confuse volunteers.

Physical order once depended on the type of record. For nonfiction, the classification of Charles A. Cutter helped a patron move quickly from card to shelf. Its letters ran from A for encyclopedias, periodicals and society publications, through B to D for philosophy, psychology and religion, E to G for biography, history, geography and travels, H to K for social sciences and law, L to T for science and technology, and X to Z for philology, book arts and bibliography. Early modern libraries had no universal method, with books grouped by language, by physical form or, in scholarly rooms, by categories such as philosophy, saints and mathematics. The Sorbonne library in Paris was among the first to list titles alphabetically under each subject. Printed catalogs, sometimes called dictionary catalogs, appeared in the early modern period after the press made strict control necessary, and scholars outside a library could learn its contents. Local copies were interleaved with blank leaves for additions, bound as guardbooks with slips for new entries, or kept as loose slips in cardboard or tin boxes on shelves. Card files grew after the 5-by-3-inch card was standardized for personal filing, the Library of Congress card service from 1911 spread cards through most American libraries, and the British National Bibliography ran an equivalent scheme from 1956. Ideas for choosing VBS kits that fit small church volunteers work best when that subject logic is visible on the shelf itself. Put kits for the same age group or theme together, file the record where volunteers already look, and keep the spine label identical to the shelf list.

Walk your shelves with a short list in hand. Check that each kit has one record under author, title, and subject, that the spine number matches the record, and that the shelf list reflects the true order. Move misfiled boxes, add missing subject references for the next teacher, and date the list so the next coordinator trusts it.