1. Evolution of cataloging norms from ancient Mesopotamia to RDA Presented by Harold Thiele At the ALCTS – CaMMS Cataloging Norms Interest Group, ALA Mid- Winter meeting, Seattle, 1/26/2013

2. Mesopotamia Sumer >>> Assyria  The earliest evidence of a written language is attributed to the Mesopotamia civilization of Sumer, located in Southern Iraq.  3500 BC proto-cuneiform was in use.  Documents were being produced by inscribing text into clay and wood tablets.  By 2600 BC cuneiform syllabic script was in use.  Libraries / archives were being formed.  Cataloguing practices were being developed.

3. Mesopotamia Sumer > Akkadia

4. What Problems did the ‘Scribe/Librarians’ have to solve?  How to identify the work at hand.  Clay & wooden tablets  No titles, authors, publishers, etc.  How to organize the works.  Catalogs  Shelf listing

5. What did the ‘scribe/librarians’ do?  Analysis of the earliest tablets and catalogs give us some impression of the approaches these early scribe/librarians took to get control of the materials they were responsible for.  Developed classed / subject classification  Developed the colophon  Compiled lists of works from the colophons and developed catalogs

6. Colophons  The scribe/librarians began to add a ‘tag’ to the tablet/s that provided information about the tablet – a colophon.  They began creating these tags using selected keywords from the first two lines of text (Dalby, 1986).  The practice of using keywords to identify text was abandoned relatively quickly. Keyword colophons and catalogs appear only in the earliest deposits.

7. Incipits  The scribe/librarians continued to innovate, looking for better ways to identify their texts.  Early on the scribe/librarians began to identify the texts by the first few words of the opening line of the text – the incipit.  In time, they began skipping formulaic opening words.  The use of the incipit was a way to identify a physical tablet rather than an abstraction of a literary work.

8. Incipits - 2  The use of the incipits proved to be very successful and has been used from its introduction in Sumer through today.  Incipits are still used to identify untitled poems, songs, prayers, hymns, Papal Bulls, and so forth.  Word processors use incipits to identify documents.  Incipits are part of standard music notation.

9. Descriptive Phrase  While the incipit proved to be useful in identifying literary works, it was less useful for a wide range of other materials (accounting, scientific, technical, medical, cooking, contracts, and so forth).  To handle these materials, the scribe / librarian would create a descriptive phrase that identified the contents of the text.

10. Development of the Title  The use of the incipit or descriptive phrase to identify texts caused them to became the de facto title of the text.  Emphasis was place on developing an excellent opening line that would make a good incipit.  It is only in the modern era that the creation of a title for a text has replaced the use of the incipit.

11. Colophons 2  Colophons developed rapidly to include sequence, title, responsibility (scribe), and additional info.  Percentage of tablets with colophons increases with time.  Colophons used to generate catalogues.

12. Catalogues  Shortly after the development of the colophon, the scribe/librarians developed the idea of aggregating the ‘title’ information into lists or catalogs.  The catalogs developed over time to include the title, extent, and other information.  The catalogs rapidly became subject related catalogs.

13. Development of the Main Entry  The consequence of the development of the catalog was the development of the main entry.  The catalog listed the complete entry of the item giving the title, extent, form, and often included its location – a title main entry.

14. Title Main Entry  The Title Main Entry was developed in Sumer and remained the preferred catalog entry in Mesopotamia and many other areas of the world, especially the Orient.  During the antiquity period throughout Mesopotamia and the rest of the literary world authors were rarely acknowledged.  There is only one known author from this period.

15. Enheduanna (2285-2250 BCE)  First named author in all of world literature  'The Sumerian Temple Hymns' ; Nin-me- sara, "The Exaltation of Inanna“ ; In-nin sa-gur-ra (incomplete) ; In-nin me-hus- a, "Inanna and Ebih ; Hymn to Nanna.  Akkadian princess, daughter of King Sargon of Akkad, High Priestess of the Moon god Nanna in the Sumerian city- state of Ur  Copies of her work were maintained for millennia after her death in temples in Nippur, Ur, and Lagash.

16. Classed / Subject Cataloging  Examination of the Sumerian and Akkadian catalogs reveals that the Mesopotamians organized their libraries into subject holdings areas. Most catalogs represent the texts in a single holdings area.  von Dassow (2005) re-examination of Woolley’s 1930/40’s excavation at Alalah findspots records revealed a larger role of libraries in general and the presence of specialized library holdings and unrecognized personal and family libraries within the ruling households.

17. Relationships  von Dassow found that the Mesopotamian library was a distributed library with holdings scattered throughout the building or compound. Catalogs found within a holdings area were related to those holdings.

18. Author Main Entry  The development of the author main entry would have to wait two millennia for the Greeks.  The concept of the added entry would have to wait for almost four millennia for Thomas Hyde and the 1674 Catalog of the Bodleian Library.

19. Greece – Rise of the Author  The next major development in main entry occurred in the Hellenistic world.  During the 6 th Century BC, many works originally designed for oral recitation by trained bards were written down to stabilize the text.  5 th Century BC copies of literary works of known authors become common  Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, etc.

20. Establishment of Authoritative Versions  Because of growing scandals involving misrepresentations, in the mid 4 th Century BC, Athens requires that an authoritative version of each play be kept on file.  Actors required to follow this text  Beginning of idea of copyright  There is a growing recognition of ‘author’ as an important bibliographic value.

21. Library of Alexandria c. 295 BC  48 BC? ~ 2nd C AD? ~ 391 AD? ~ 642 AD? ~ ?  The Library of Alexandria is given credit for the development of the author main entry.  Major increase in collection size and range ~ growth estimates ca. 30,000 to 700,000 papyrus scrolls covering all subject areas.  Title estimates range from 20,000 to over 1,000,000  Within subject holdings area, the scrolls were arranged alphabetically by author.  Index rolls were associated with each bin that lists the contents of the bins.

22. Callimachus 310/305–240 BC  Librarian at the Library of Alexandria credited with producing the complete and chronologically arranged catalogue of the Library of Alexandria.  Called the Pinakes, its formal title was Tables of Persons Eminent in Every Branch of Learning together with a List of Their Writings.  It was a classed catalogue  120 volumes long  Each Table represented a subject/literature area  Alphabetically arranged by author (1 st letter)

23. Pinakes  Callimachus' system divided works into six genres and five sections of prose.  Law, history, medicine, mathematics, natural science, and miscellanies.  Rhetoric, epic, tragedy, comedy, and lyric poetry.  Within each category the contents were alphabetized by author.

24. Systematic Presentation  Biographical sketch of the author -- provided the author's name, birthplace, his father's name, any teachers he trained under, and his educational background.  List of the author's publications in alphabetical order  Started with a title.  First line of the work,  Summary of its contents,  Information about the origin of the roll.

25. Pinakes 2  Pinakes were not unusual in Hellenistic libraries.  Classed catalog.  Initial arrangement was by subject area.  Systematic presentation.  Author Main Entry  Alphabetical listing (1 st letter)  Biographical details (authority record)  Title 2 nd Entry  Alphabetical, chronological, or classed listing  Bibliographic details (authority record)  The Pinakes became a model to use all over the Mediterranean.  Influence can be traced to medieval times.  10 th C. Arabic counterpart Ibn al-Nadim's Al-Fihrist ("Index").  Variations on this system were used in libraries until the late 1800s.

26. Rome to the 17 th Century  Very little development of library catalogs during this period.  Generally it was a period of regression.  The few lists that might pass for a catalog were poorly executed inventory lists.  No consistency in how the entries were formed.  The grand collections of the Hellenistic period were gone.

27. Thomas Hyde  Bodleian catalogs of 1674 and 1738  Presented a formal set of codes for entry, preference for author main entry.  Tries to bring together the works of an author references  from variant forms of an author’s name  also from variant ways of entering a work.  Marks the beginnings of added entries to a main entry.  Catalogs are no longer single entry listings.

28. From Hyde to AACR2  Growing formalization of cataloging codes that focused on main entry (preferred author), with added entries.  The flexibility of the card catalog enabled the use of a limited number of added entries.  The development of the computer and networking added pressure to revisit the main and added entry concepts

29. RDA  Main entry and added entry terminology no longer used.  Authorized access points and variant access points used.  Strong stated preference for creator – title format for access points.  Use of a wider variety of access points strongly encouraged to take advantage of computer data manipulation strong points.