Pagan Library Guild

Glossary of PLG Library Terms

Accession/Deaccession: Accepting and removing books from a collection

Archiving: maintaining and preserving materials often in perpetuity. Archives often consist of unique items, like transcripts, personal papers, and realia objects

Backlog: the items you physically own but are not yet cataloged.

Bibliographic Control: the standards used to maintain uniform description of all items. This includes MARC, the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, the Library of Congress Subject Heading. All these provide rules for standardized description to facilitate cooperation.

Catalog: A searchable list of all items within a library collection. Either paper (i.e. cards) or online

Catalog records: A pice of formatted data describing an individual item.

Cataloging: the data entry work to create catalog records for items in the library collection

Circulation: The lending/borrowing rules associated with Library items.

Classification: Numerical shelf arrangement systems like the Dewey Decimal Classification, Library of Congress Classification.

Collection: A selectively chosen group of documents (of particular formats)

Collection development: maintaining, acquiring and removing items from your collection. Often this is determined by a collection development policy.

Format: The physical types of objects. Books, CD ROM, websites, VHS

LC: The Library of Congress. www.loc.gov

MARC: Machine Readable Cataloging. An internationally accepted standard for online cataloging.

OCLC: Online Computer Library Center. A company that provides access to one of the world�s largest union catalogs and is the main facilitator for interlibrary loaning. www.oclc.org

Online catalog: An online (computerized) list of all items within a library collection. Also referred to as an OPAC, Online Public Access Catalog.

P.U.C.K.: Pagan Union Catalog Kiosk. Currently in incubation/idea phase. Hopes to be an online union catalog for Pagan libraries.

Preservation: The work to maintain the physical integrity of all items in the collection.

Scope: The conceptual limits of a collection. What you do and don�t want in defines your scope.

Union Catalog: A catalog of catalogs from other libraries. A Union Catalog can search many different libraries at once.

Z39.50: An online data transfer standard for MARC records

© Pagan Library Guild, 2004