Cataloguing standards, rules and guidelines have changed through the ages from individual instructions for individual libraries to now internationally shared guidance built for the international exchange of bibliographic data. This work by Professor Guerrini provides an overview of the changes that have taken place in cataloguing standards and the great work of shared standards of international organisations, primarily the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA), towards reaching that ideal of ‘universal bibliographic control’. Even universal bibliographic control is a concept that continues to evolve as the capabilities for documenting and sharing bibliographic data evolve.

At first, our technologies only allowed individual libraries to build their catalogues. Afterwards, the idea of creating copies of that cataloguing, such as in a book catalogue, emerged as printing developed. Technology advanced to enable printing catalogue cards to purchase from a centralised source when a library added holdings held by another library. We moved through several phases of automation from being able at first to exchange records in a standard format to later re-using data available internationally on the web or simply to link to existing data, wherever it resides.

Cataloguing is a costly operation, so the idea to share as much of that work as we can emerged early on. To share, we all need to use the same standards and compatible systems or at least to identify our data in such a way to enable its intelligent reuse. However, ‘catalog it once for all’ (Tillett, 1993) is not a new concept. It was a popular refrain at the beginning of the 20th century, as libraries endeavoured to share their cataloguing work. Systems like the Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) were built with the perspective of sharing the authority control activity. Data are being used for creative purposes, far beyond the original intent to identify the standard form of a name to be used in a catalogue, ready to enable any variant form of a name to access that entity.

So, as capabilities evolve, the focus of the cataloguing standards, guidelines and rules have evolved from building a bibliographic record to documenting bibliographic data, identifying the described entity to enable users to find, identify, select and obtain the information they want. These are the objectives of Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) along with the ‘navigate’ function incorporated into the International Cataloguing Principles (ICP) and Resource Description and Access (RDA).