The AACR2 as a Design Schema for Bibliographic Databases

Abstract

The Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules are actually a set of rules for a database--a bibliographic database. An examination of the rules from a generalized database approach, using the entity-relationship model, shows that each rule belongs to at least one of six types: content; establishing entities, relationships, or attributes; authorized sources; domain; format; and access points. The current arrangement of the rules and their individual composition ignores these types: it scatters rules of the same type and mixes a variety of types within a single rule. This results in confusion between the internal/external and conceptual levels of design and a poorly organized presentation of cataloging rules. A generalized database approach suggests an outline for a better organization of the rules. It also provides insight into a variety of issues, such as the role of the main entry. Further investigations using this approach would improve our understanding of the cataloging code.