Card Services
Eminent librarians like Charles Jewett, Albert Blor, Henry Stevens, F. Max Mueller, W.C.Lane, Melvil Dewey and several others advocated centralised cataloguing services.
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress began printing catalogue cards in July, 1898. This service is made available to all libraries since 1901. The cards were prepared and printed for American copyright books. In 1910 the service was extended to include several large libraries outside the government structure.
The card service of the Library of Congress is a part of the activities of the library. There is no separate central organization, separate from the Library of Congress. Each and every item catalogued by the Library of Congress is given a serial number known as 'card number'. Card Numbers are noted in the Cumulative Book Index through' which the cards are ordered.
Detailed descriptive cataloguing was followed by the Library of Congress. However, during 1951, and 1963 the Library of Congress had gone in for limited cataloguing. In limited cataloguing only simple details of documents are given. Even then, not every document is catalogued. Some items which are considered not so important are omitted.
All-The-Book-Plan
This was started by the Library of Congress in 1953. The purpose is to increase the number of titles for which printed cards were available. The Library of Congress expected that American publishers would oblige by sending. pre-publication copies of current publications so that Library of Congress could produce the cards as soon as possible. The Library of Congress order numbers were printed on the verso of the title page to help easy accessibility to the printed cards. In 1959, R. R. Bowker Company agreed for listing the titles in the Library Journal and Publisher's Weekly in exchange for cataloguing information provided by the Library of Congress for the review copies received by it.
Cards-With-Books Programme
In this Programme the Library of Congress printed cards were supplied with the books through the publishers and book sellers. This programme was started in 1961 as another attempt to help the libraries with the catalogue cards for the books as quickly as possible.
National Programme of Acquisitions and Cataloguing (NPAC)
Through legislation in 1958 and later in 1965 the Library of Copgress is empowered to acquire, catalogue and distribute biliographic records for all materials of research value that were published in foreign countries. Under this programme which was started in 1966 several acquisitions and cataloguing offices were opened in foreign countries. By the end of the first year of its establishment nine overseas offices were providing publications from twenty one countries with cataloguing information from seventeen foreign sources. Nowadays, the demand for printed catalogue cards is met by MARC tapes. But, for non-MARC cards the demand has to be met by manually filled information from inventory stocks.
British National Bibliography
The British National Bibliography is an organization, which is self-supporting. It is controlled by a Council represented among others by the Library Association, the British Museum (now known as British Library), the Publishers' Association and the Booksellers' Association. The organisation has access to documents as and when they are received at the copy right office.
The national bibliography complied by this organization appeared in 1950. Its card service began in 1956. Entries are also provided for sheaf catalogues. Card service can be availed by sending the BNB entry number in the bibliography. Prior to the introduction of card service by BNB, libraries could use its bibliography only as a master from which their own cards were produced. In some library systems, marked copies of BNB were tried as catalogues in their branch libraries.