Making the Pieces Fit: Little Women, Works, and the Pursuit of Quality

In current cataloging practice, the identification of an item as a member of a particular work set is accomplished by assigning a main entry heading, or main entry citation, in the bibliographic record representing that item. The main entry citation is normally comprised of a primary author name and the uniform title associated with the work. However, the quality of bibliographic records varies, and this means of identification is not universally used by catalogers. Thus, consistent identification and retrieval of records representing editions of works is not guaranteed. Research is reported that investigates the extent to which records that are members of a particular work set may be automatically identified as such.