Eighteenth-Century Military Treatises and Challenges for Collocation in Library Catalogs

Two eighteenth-century Britishmilitary treatises, Humphrey Bland’s Treatise of Military Discipline, and the British Army’s 1728 Regulations remind catalogers that the bibliographic relationships among items that warrant their collocation in library catalogs are not always clear. The historical circumstance of the two treatises’ publication requires catalogers to recall definitions of a “work,” and establish which relationships between bibliographic entities warrant collocation in library catalogs. Both treatises seem to embody the same work, though according to conventional cataloging practice they do not share the same author. The items nevertheless retain a bibliographic relationship warranting collocation. Finally, the concepts of the “superwork” and “super record” might also assist catalogers in developing collocating mechanisms to bring together records of related bibliographic entities.