Cataloguing, Lies, and Videotape: Comparing the IMDb and the Library Catalogue

Many librarians have written about the Internet Movie Database (IMDb; http://www.imdb.com), praising it as a popular and effective reference tool.However, the cataloguing principles that drive the database’s user-friendly structure have been largely overlooked. In this paper, we examine the organizational principles behind the IMDb and compare them to standard cataloguing practice according to AACR2 and the MARC format. This approach provides illustrations of how different cataloguing principles support information access, while offering a new perspective on the library online catalogue. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: Website: © 2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]