Il controllo bibliografico in Germania

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Claudia Fabian

Abstract

Germany has a federal type of political structure. Three libraries form the “national virtual library”: the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (SBB); the Deutsche Bibliothek (DDB); and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB).

They are the basis of many activities of the UBC, which are carried on with the most varied and always different partners: university and state libraries, other research libraries, agencies for collective catalogues and the central agency for public reading libraries. Germany has its own cataloguing rules, the Regeln für alphabetische Katalogisierung, (RAK), which are based on international principles, the Regeln für den Schlagwortkatalog, (RSWK), and a German form of exchange, Maschinenlesbares Austauschformat für Bibliotheken (MAB).

There has been very intense official discussion in recent years on the future of cataloguing rules. The cataloguing community has three objectives in mind when these developments are discussed: a strong drive towards the internationalisation of the rules, the need to consider the modern possibilities offered by automated catalogues and the desire to harmonize cataloguing rules alphabetically and by subject.

The Deutsche Bibliothek produces the national German bibliography, containing all publications published in Germany and German publications published abroad. All records of the national bibliography from 1945 to February 2002 are now available on DVD. The data base of periodicals, Zeitschriftendatenbank (ZDB), has an important role in Germany’s approach to the UBC. A total of 4300 libraries continuously register periodicals and works in this collective data base. There is only one bibliographic record with the locations of all the libraries that possess the periodical. The date base contains a million titles and five million six hundred thousand locations. Cataloguing of periodicals is done through ZDB, while the national collection is catalogued through the Deutsche Bibliothek. All records are integrated into six collective catalogues. Three authorities in Germany share the file at national level, all three hosted by the Deutsche Bibliothek: one for authorities, one for subject titles and a third for names of persons.

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