QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS

1. UNION CATALOGUES

A union catalogue is an important tool for a librarian. It is “a catalogue listing in one sequence the holdings of two or many libraries”. We may recognize local, regional and national union catalogues. Further division may be done on the basis of the kinds of material included, e.g. books, periodicals, films, etc.

Functions of Union Catalogues:

A union catalogue can serve the following functions:

    1.        To serve as a tool for the location of a document

   2.        To identify a given document for which bibliographic information is provided (in case of a periodical union catalogue, information like name of periodical, change in name, when it was started, whether continuing or not, etc., may have to be included)

   3.        To help in inter-library loan (when a user requires a document not available in a given library, a union catalogue is consulted to locate the nearest library like to have that document)

   4.        To serve as a tool for selection of documents

   5.        To help to achieve coordination in the acquisition and selection programme of a group of libraries (it can help avoid unnecessary duplication of materials like periodicals, etc), and

   6.        To reveal the total document resources of libraries in a given geographical region, thereby indicating the strengths and weaknesses of the holdings in that area.

Example:

National Union Catalogue of Scientific Serials in India (NUCSSI), New Delhi. INSDOC, 1988, 4 v.

National Union Catalogue of scientific serials in India (NUCSSI) includes data about 35,000 scientific serials available in more than 800 libraries spread all over India. It covers data revised upto 1983 and incorporates data from 18 volumes of union catalogues published and compiled by INSDOC, during 1965-82.

Union catalogues are extremely useful for the location and identification of documents, and are therefore regarded as important tools. The number of union catalogues is increasing at a fast pace. These have improved in their frequency, promptness, coverage, amount of details etc. this is mainly due printed with the help of computers. Even developing countries are beginning neither too expensive nor too difficult. The union catalogues prepared by INSDOC are one such example.