RECENT ADVANCES IN DOCUMENT DESCRIPTIONAND REPRESENTATION: ISBD AND PRECIS

B GuhaIndian National Scientific ,Documentation CentreNew Delhi-II 0012

The circumstances leading to the adoption ofthe new method of document description viz. theISBD and also the new system of subject indexing viz.PRECIS are discussed and explained. The far reach-ing consequences of these two developments are alsobrought out.

In any type of library and informationservice, ultimately two things are most impor-t••nt. In fact the effectiveness of the se r v icedepends largely on them. These two vitaljobs are, in modern terminology, documentdescription and document representation. Bydocument description we mean largely thataspect of describing a document which bringsc ut its aut hor is hip, di st inct ive title, edition,imprint and particulars about the physical makeup of it, in fact everything that clearly dis-tinguishes a particular document from all otherdocuments. By document representation, wemean describing or representing the otheraspect of a document i. e , , its subject contentor 'aboutne s s '

Whenever we think of document descrip-tion and representation in a systematic way,we actually think in term of some surrogates,like a catalogue entry, an entry in bibliographi-ca l l is t or similar bibliographic records.Most of the surrogates that are created inlibrary and information centres are actuallycombination of both - description and repre-sentation. Various groups of people haveworked in the field and it has a long history.In this paper two recent developments of farreaching consequences, one on the documentdescription s rde and the other on the documentrepresentation side, viz ISBD (InternationalStandard Bibliographic Description)andPRECIS (Preserved Context Indexrng System)respectively, are being discussed and thegeneral background Ie a.ding to their develop-ment brought out.

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Perhaps, the bibliographers as a grouphad the longest domination in the field, thencame the librarians followed by other informa-tion workers, like abstractors, indexers, et c .Bibliographers I interest was mainly centredaround the aspects of the physical make-up ofa document. Thus they accounted for every un-numbered page s . indicated the size of thepaper, the number of folds, and watermar k,gave information about collophon, signature,indication of any peculiarity of the copy beingdescribed, and so on. Early cataloguersrelied heavily on the technique of book des-cription perfected by the bibliographers. Quitea few items of information r-ec ornrnende d bythe bibliographers entered into the catalogueentry a Ls o. In course of time, when the need tocodify the prevailing cataloguing practices wasfelt, s orne of the items came for closerscrutiny. As a result, some of them weredropped, as they were found not so essentialin the description of a document in the conti-nuously changing context, and a few of themhave been modified. Perhaps the last majorefforts towards systematisation of rules fordocument description, along with other moreimportant aspects of cataloguing, were theholding of the International Conference onCataloguing Principles, 1961 (ICCP) and thesubsequent publication of the blue book - theAnglo-American Cataloguing Rules in 1967.

Events seem to have moved faster sincethen. Just after ten years of the Paris Con-ference, in 1971 the ISBD has come out in itsfinal form after two years of work. The imple-mentation of the ISBD was so quick in someareas that even ~ome professional librarianswere completely taken by surprise. Thus in theLibrary Journal, we find the following remarksby a professional - "I, for one, wonder howsuch a far-reaching recommended standardcould have reached this advanced stage ofdevelopment with so little public notice" [1].However, it is also maintained that ISBD is one

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of the products, perhaps the latest, of thetrain of activity set in motion by the ParisConference in 1961. The sy s te rn was actuallyworked out by a Working Group set up by theInternational Meeting of Cataloguing Expertsin 1969. The text expla ining the wor king andapplication of ISBD was issued in 1971 by theIFLA Co rnrrrit te e on Cataloguing. Alrnosts irnul tane ous lv , f'r orn 1972 a nurnbe r ofirrrpo r ta nt national bibliographies have startedus ing the ISBD in their published lists. Thelatest tally is that 8 national bibliographiesand other institutions are using and 6 othersare thinking of introducing it [2].

It may be mentioned here that this inter-national agreement on a standard method ofdocument description, through the ISBD, washastened to a large extent with the introductionof projects like MARC by the Library ofCongress. It was r ea lis ed , beyond anymeasure of doubt, that if the input to a largesystem is decentralised and if bibliographicalinformation is to be exchanged on an inter-national scale, then document description hadto be completely standardised. The require-ments of a machine readable file also not onlypointed towards this necessity but also de-manded even more compatibility with regardto punctuation, format, sections etc.

It is remarkable that the same projectviz., MARC was also responsible, to a largeextent, in improving the document representa-tion aspect of surrogate making. This happenedthrough the introduction of the PRECIS index-ing. To get a feel of the far reaching e ffe cteof these two developments let us have a closelook at a typical entry of the British NationalBibliography (BNB) reproduced below:

620.19233 - Materials: Fibre reinforcedpla st lc s , Deformation

Spencer, Anthony Ja me s Merrill. Deforma-tions of fibre -reinforced materials /[by]A. J. M. Spencer. - Oxford: ClarendonPress, 1972. - [6], l28p: ill; 24cm.-(Oxford science research papers)Bibl. p.123-l25.- Index.ISBN 0 19 851939 7 Pbk: 3.00

(B72-24l4])

The BNB is the only bibliography whichis using both ISBD and PRECIS which we con-sider are the two most important developments

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in the area of document description and repre-sentation. Hence, we have chosen an entryfrom it. The entry, shown above, is actuallya surrogate of a document. Let us try to seehow this entry has been able to describe andrepresent the document for which it stands inthe bibliography.

1£ we ignore the head ing in the entry,which has been chosen by the cataloguer andrendered accord ing to certain cataloguing rules,we find that the structure of the entry is quited if te r ent Ir orn what we usually get following thedescriptive cataloguing rules of any cataloguingcode. Our familiar indentions, separates e c t ion s , punctuation etc. are no longer there.In th e ir place have come some new punctuationmarks, some new items of information and anapparent new look. To und e rs ta nd the logic ofthis new s t r uc t ur e it is necessary to go intosome details of the ISBD.

It is known that a document description isnot only required in a catalogue but also inva r ious bibliogra phical a ct iv it ie s , like announce-ment of new publications, acquisition and dis-tribution of books etc., ISBD actually takescare of all such activities. It therefore in-cludes e lern ent s which may be necessary to all.For a pa r t ic ula r purpose a selection from theelements comprising the full standard descrip-tion may be used. This brings out one import-ant characteristic of ISBD i. e., it is not rn ea ntfor descriptive cataloguing only but for otherb ib l iog r a ph l ca i works also.

It was soon r ea l is ed that a single stand-ard could not cope up with the bibliographicaldescription of all types of documents. Hence,three separate standards were prepared to takecare of the main types of documents. They areISBD(M) for monographs, ISBD(S) for serials,and ISBD(A- V) for audio-visual materials. Weare here concerned mainly with the ISBD(Ml.

The seven broad areas ar the elementsunder them are as fo llows:

1. Title and statement of authorship area1. 1 Title proper1. 2 Parallel titles, other title (s ) and

t rtl e infor rnat ion1. 3 Statement(s) of authorship

2. Ed ition area2. 1 Edition statement2.2 Statement(s) of authorship relating

to the edition

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3. Imprint area3.1 Place of publication3.2 Name of publisher3. 3 Date .of publication3.4 Place of printing3.5 Name of printer

4. Collation area4.1 Number of volumes and/or number

of pages4.2 Illustration statement4.3 Size4.4 Accom.panying materials

5. Series area

6. Notes area

7. International Standard Book Nurnb e r ,binding and price area

7.1 ISB~7.2 Binding7.3 Price

Each of th e ,:.!-lve elem.ent is indicatedby p r es c r ib ed ?t:nctuation rna r k and sym.bol.Thus the elements put with the appropriatepunctuation rna r k s will look as follows in askeleton entry:

Title proper = parallel title: other t it l e I s),:st ate rne nt sf s] of authorship. - Edition state-ment/statement(s) of authorship relating tothe edition. - Place of pub l ic at ion : name ",'publisher, date of publication (plate of print-Ing r name of printer). - Number of v ol urne sand/or number of pages: illu.stration state-ment; size and accompanying mat.erials. _(Series)NotesISEN Binding price

A comparison of the above entry with tit"!structure of the usual main entry in a cata-logue will reveal a few interesting difference s.The ISBD description starts with the title of adocument. It ha s nothing to do with the head-ing. This will be determined by the context.If we are thinking in terms of a library c at a ;Io g ue entry. then the rules for the choice andrendering of he a d irig s will determine theappropriate heading. After that all otherdetail s of the document could be mentionedin t ne a oo v e form.

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In the above structure, a s had beenpointed out earlier. the usual paragraphindentions for each section have been elimi-nated. From the beginning of the title to theend of the collation element, the whole des-cription is in the form of a single paragraph.But punctuation marks have been used toindicate the starting or termination of an ele-ment or group of elements. They a re morelike 'field tags' i, e , , indicator of a field. Themain areas are separated by point and dash(. -I. But when by paragraphing. typographyor ide nt at io n, one area is clearly separatedfrom another. only a point (. ) may be used.A completely new element of description hasbeen introduced 1. e., the ISBN. It may alsobe mentioned that three elements v iz, ISBN,binding and price have all been provided at theend, as they are not required in all types ofcatalogues and lists. Where they are notrequired, e. g., in a library catalogue, theycan be easily eliminated. Thus, it would benoticed that if we eliminate the last part, thedescription can easily fit into a typical librarycatalogue entry. Similarly. the full descrip-tion can e a sily fit into an entry in a nationalbibliography, publisher's catalogues and simi-lar lists. In fact Chapter 6 (Description-Separately published monographs) of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR) is beingrevised in accordance with the ISBD prescrip-tion.

The logic behind the need and the pr e s>cr ipt ion of ISBD has been explained by SumnerSpa ldrn g , who himself had taken active partin the formulation of both the AACR and ISBD,in the following words [3]:

"To avoid duplication in cataloguing ofcurrent publication, the following plan wasco nc e pt uaj i se d,

1. Each country should have a nationalb ibl iog r aphy or cataloguing service. whichwould be responsible for cataloging all publi-cations of that country for the libraries in thatcountry and for export for use in other coun-t r ie s,

2. All co unt r ie s should agree to a stan-dard style of making b ib'[ iog r aph ic a'[ descrip-tions.

3. Each national cataloging serviceshould avail itself of the product of the othersin providing catalog entrie s for foreign booksfor libraries in its own country.

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4. Since exchange of this data wouldeventually be in machine readable form, thepotentiality of standardized punctuation a s adevice to make po s s ib l e automatic tagging offields in the description (thereby cutting inputcosts) should be e xpl or e d ",

It has already been said that ISBD hasalready got the approval of the ISO. Manypeople have expressed their surprise at tilequick and easy way of this approval becauseISO recommendations usually pass through acertain pattern of activities and hence taketime w nic h may be anything upto twenty year s.This is because standardization has beenapproached from the other end, so to say.Through the IFLA Committee on Cataloguing,some of the big user groups, like the producer!of national bibliographies had met and accepteda st an da r d practice of b ib l io gr aph icaj descrip-tion which would be acceptable to each ofthem. Thus, acceptance by the major> usersand ensuring the compatibility of major sys-tems are already guranteed. In such a situa-tion it doe s not take muc n time for a pr opo sa],already haviI:lg the sanction of an internationalagreement, to go to t ne stage of an ISO re-commendation. This is exactly how the ISBDhas come.

Apart from meeting the three ba sicobjectives viz. to make records from differ-ent sources interchangeable, to facilitate theirinterpretation acro s s language barrier s; andto facilitate the conversion of such records tomachine-readable form, the use of ISBD indifferent bibliographi.cal activities LS l ike lv tohave its influence on our cataloguing pr a ct rc>

es. It has already been mentio·ned that therules of the descriptive cataloguing aspect ofthe AACR, which has Come nearest to an inter-national code, are going to be revised soonto a c co mo dat e document description accordingto the ISBD rules. But there is another aspectwhere ISB D may have its profound influence incataloguing practice. This is regarding themain entry itself.

It would be generally agreed that in anycatal oguing code most of the rules are regard-ing correct choice of heading which is actuallyrelated to the question of authorship or autho-rial responsibility. It has often been co mpl a in..ed that these rules ·contribute largely to highcataloguing cost. The AACR is supposed tohave r at ional ise d these rules to a great ex-tent. Even then one hears occasional com-

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plaints. Here is a complaint which will soundvery familiar, " .•. the cause of high cata-loging costs is that quite aside from the intri-cate cataloging rules, necessitated by biblio-graphic complexity, in many cases the AACRthemselves take a labyrinthine approach to theanalysis of authorship responsibilities ..•. Toreduce costs we must simplify catalogingTilles .•. "[41. This s irrrp l ica t ion , per-naps, cannot come so long as the concept ofthe main entry is allowed to dominate thecatalogue. The main entry is in most casestne author main entry and author approachneed not be given more importance than anyother approach. There is already an opinionaga in s t the concept of the main entry. Per-haps, the chief advocate of this opinion is JayE. Daily. He believes that the ,"Main entryturns out, in fact, to be p r e tty much a will-o-the-wisp. It is a concept deeply imbedded inour practice, but when we come to inquireinto the rationale behind it, it is difficult todiscover any .•. what a vast, complicated,unnecessary bibliographic rigmarole we haveraised up in order to provide it " [5].

It is quite possible that the wider use ofthe ISBD will encourage US to get away fromthe unnecessal'y bibliographic rigmarole,centred round the main entry, and accept anISB D entry, starting with the title element,as the 'basic' cata:ogue entry. This Would bea true unit entry. All entries could be easiiyprepared by just inserting the appropriateheadings according to the different approachpo int s for the document. The catalogue wouldthus become a true retrieval tool. If tbishappens then it Would, perhaps, be the great-est revolution in cataloguing practice so far.

As said earlier, the development of thePRECIS has been the most important develop-ment in the realm of document repre sentation.The necessity arose, in this case also, out ofthe requirements of MARC tape input 'prepara-tion. It wa s felt that the two <' "ernativeschemes of classification viz •• modifiedDewey Decimal and the Library of Congressschemes that were used to represent thesubject contents of books, in MARC records,were hardly adequate for the purpose. TheBNB computerization project aj so is said tohave made BNB look for an alternative index-ing system. All these resulted in thedevelopment of the PRECIS and its introduc ~tion in the BNB.

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It may be said that in the MARC record,the subject representation is provided in theform of a subject string- only. In the BNBentry that we have reproduced earlier, thefeature heading a c tua IIy carries this string.But irs tb e printed BNB a rotated index provid-ing an alphabetical approach to the classifiedmain part is prepared. So the PRECIS index-ing system has two important aspects v iz , ,I) rules for naming the concepts in the analys-ed subject, putting the concept -terms in astructured sequence and thus the creation ofthe string, ii] Rotating the concep-terms inthe main string in such,a way that approachpoints are created from every important con-cept of the same subj ec t and preparation ofreferences to guide the inquires to the appro-priate points of approach. It should be men-tioned that the PRECIS string is independent ofany scheme of classification. The subject isanalysed independently and represented accord-ing to certain rules. The order of significanceof the component terms is determined on thebasis of their respective role in the formula-tion of the subject. For this purpose a set ofrole operators has been developed and everyconstituent concept in a compound subject isassigned a role operator which automaticallysecures its order.

To take an example, a document entitled'Political aspects of university ma.npowe rplanning', would be analysed and role ope r a tor sare assigned in the following way:

Concept analys is:

(5) Education(3) Planning

(4) Unive:.·s ities (p) Manpower(1) Political aspects

In the above exa rnpl e the role operators indi-cate as follows:

(5) Dis cipline(4) Key sy s te m(p) SubsystelTI, structure, rna te r ia l(3) Effect, action(1) Viewpoint, perspective

The above analysis and the significance for-rriula controlled by the role operators finallygive us the following string:

Education. Universities. Manpower.Planning. Political aspects. From. theabove string a num.ber of index entries areprepared, in the BNB, according to a system

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of rotation, which is more like shunting. Theentries would be:

1. EducationUniversities. Manpower. Planning.Political aspects

2. Universities. EducationManpower. Planning. Politicalaspects

3. Manpower. Universities. EducationPlanning. Political aspects

4. Planning. Manpower. Universities.Education

5. Political aspects.Universities.

Planning. Manpower.Education'

It m.ust be mentioned that the above isa short description of the PRECIS index asused in the BNB. What is rno r e Impor-tant isthe introduction of PRECIS as a new rrieth od ofdocurrient representation. Since this repre--sentation is being incorporated into the BNB-MARC records which in turn are being sent toother countries and o r gan is at ion s , there isevery possibility that this m.ay soon be corne aninternationally accepted method of d ocurrrerrtrepresentation. So far it has not been possi-ble for us to agree to neither an internationalclassification sy st e rn nor indexing sys tern.The nearest that we can achieve may be a sys-tern of document representation like thePRECIS which is neutral of any classificationsys te m , III fact it has been proved that thePRECIS concept analysis helps classifiers andindexers irrespective of the scherne they aregoing to use.

So, then, through ISBD and PRECIS ourdual work of document description and repre-

sentation has taken very important strides inunison in recent years. That there was a widegap between document description and docu-ment representation and that there was a realneed for correcting this anamoly was pointedout succintly by Hans Wellisch. He said,·Since these subject headings are an integralpart of the product [catalogue entries] whichboth librarians and the public at large havecome to regard as a paragon of quality. in theminds of most users it has become an axiomthat the LC subject headings are necessarilyof the same high standard as the bibliographical

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data and that the same painstaking care hasbeen extended both in their formation and int he ir use for the 'indication of the 'aboutness'of documents. This, I submit, is a grand anddangerous delusion. "[6]

It is now hoped that the introduction ofISBD and PREC IS ana lys is of subjects willreduce this gap.

References

[1] SWANSON, GERALD: ISBD, standard orsecret? Libr Jl 1973, 98(2), 124-30.

[2] ANDERSON, DOROTHY: InternationalStandard Bibliographic Description formonographs [ISBD(M)] checklists.Unesco Bull Librs 1974, 28(1), 34-39.

[3] SPALDING, SUMNER C: ISBD its origin,rat ionale, and implications. Libr Jl1973, 98(2), 121-23.

(4] MASSOUNEAU, SUZANNE: Bibliographiccontrol and cataloging cost control;

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Irrte r l.o c k ing problems, a plea for stan-dardization of bibliographic data bypublishers. Libr J1 1973, 98(2), 1890-93.

[5] DAILY, JAy D and MYERS, MILDRED S:Cataloging for technical assistants, 2nded, Washington, Gryphon House, 1973.Chap. 5.

[6] WELLISCH, HANS: Subject retrieval inthe seventies - methods, problems,prospects. In Subject retrieval in theseventies, new directions. Proc. of aninternational symposium held at theCenter of Adult Education, Un iv, ofMaryland, College Park, May 14 to -IS,1971. 1972.

INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OFLIBRARY ASSOCIATIONS: InternationalStandard Bibliographic Description (forsingle volume and multi-volume mono-graphic publications). London, IFLACommittee on Cataloguing, 1971.

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