Bibliographic control as a national service

Abstract

Bibliographic control is defined as the set of activities of research, identification, acquisition, cataloguing, management and development of the documentary resources of a library or of a network of libraries; it acts as the pivot around which an essential part of library activities and user services rotate. Above all it has a function over and above libraries that involves the whole community of readers: it records the cultural production of a country and the spread of the language (or languages) of a country in the world. In this context the article examines the role and criteria of national bibliographies and, especially, the perpectives of a new model of bibliographic control in Italy.