In Praise of the Un-Finished: The IFLA Statement of International Cataloguing Principles (2009)

The Paris Principles (1961) is themost relevant theoretical reference framework in the history of cataloguing; it was taken as the basis for the codes developed worldwide from the mid-sixties. In 2001, it was suggested calling an international meeting to re-examine critically the Paris Principles and to broaden its scope to today’s issues. The analysis dealt with the broader bibliographic universe, the greater variety of types of resources, the changes brought about by automation and informatics, the search modes and the languages used by readers who think and act globally, the need to avail of the same strategies to search OPACs, and the need for an architecture built on shared rules. On 2009 IFLA published the Statement of International Cataloguing Principles (ICP). The ICP is built on a highly adaptable conceptual framework and has employed the tremendous diversity of the library and information worlds, both physical and digital. It required strenuous work in the five-year IME ICC (IFLA Meetings of Experts on an International Cataloguing Code) proceedings started in July 2003. ICP replaces and broadens the scope of the Paris Principles from just textual works to all types of materials and from just the choice and form of entry to all aspects of bibliographic and authority data used in catalogues. The new principles meet the needs of a world much changed since 1961but they are still imperfect, like an unfinished text, especially for the theoretical analysis of the bibliographic description and for the subject indexing nearly absent from the text. Being aware of their imperfection, we feel compelled to improve them.