The History of “The Work” in the Modern Catalog

From a historical perspective, one could consider the modern library catalog to be that bibliographical apparatus that stretches at least from Thomas Hyde’s catalog for the Bodleian Library at Oxford to the near present. Mai and other recent authors have suggested postmodern approaches to knowledge organization. In these, we realize that there is no single and unique order of knowledge or documents but rather there are many appropriate orders, all of them contextually dependent. Works (oeuvres, opera, Werke, etc.), as are musical works, literary works, works of art, etc., are and always have been key entities for information retrieval. Yet catalogs in the modern era were designed to inventory (first) and retrieve (second) specific documents. From Hyde’s catalog for the Bodleian until the late twentieth century, developments are epistemologically pragmatic–reflected in the structure of catalog records, in the rules for main entry headings, and in the rules for filing in card catalogs. After 1980 developments become empirical–reflected in research conducted by Tillett, Yee, Smiraglia, Leazer, Carlyle, and Vellucci. The influence of empiricism on the pragmatic notion of “the work” has led to increased focus on the concept of the work. The challenge for the postmodern online catalog is to fully embrace the conceptof “the work,” finally to facilitate it as a prime objective for information retrieval. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: Website: © 2003 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]