Panizzi and Lubetzky are two librarians both extremely
influential in the creation of modern models for effective cataloging. Many of
Panizzi's original precepts carried over into Lubetzky's work, a full century
later. However, Lubetzky applied that work in new and innovative ways to
the modern systems and trends Panizzi could have never foreseen, and his work
was not purely derivative. Additionally, both men had similar rocky
backgrounds as refugees and poor immigrants, who attained their position almost
by accident, and by being brilliant and getting recommended for positions of
importance.
The majority of Panizzi's work involved standardizing
cataloging processes for a single large library, so many of his rules focus on
that precept. He had to create very utilitarian systems. Lubetzky,
on the other hand, was more focused on the underlying framework of cataloging,
and in making the systems universally applicable to an array of libraries.
He was focused more on the goals for cataloging that mostly remained
implicit within Panizzi's rules.
Lubetzky focused far more attention to breaking down
bibliographic descriptions into atoms, so that the bibliography could be more
easily searchable, and did far more work with access points, whereas Panizzi
had a mess to clean up, and so he concentrated more on standardizing general
cataloging practices, and placing items in a given order and structure so that
the multiple catalogers were each following the same system. The goals he followed, to make catalogs more
easy to use and items easier to locate, were implicit in this standardization,
whereas for Lubetzky, the rules needed to be explicit and foundational, because
the goals, and ways of reaching them became more and more complex.
One main difference between the two was that Panizzi almost
universally respected the authority of the title page. Lubetzky complicated matters in that regard,
by pointing out how printing errors, pseudonyms, changes in naming, and other
factors can make the title page out of date, and make searching more difficult
for the user. He was an advocate of
updating and modernizing beyond the simple title page. Partly this is because of all the work
Lubetzky did with defining authorship, and making explicit the implicit rules
of Panizzi’s work.
Lubetzky was a big fan or Panizzi,
and drew on his work to conceptualize the idea of corporate authorship, as well
as making the basic FRBR principles found in Panizzi’s work explicit. They both
hated the idea of guesswork on the part of the user, and wanted to make as much
available, as easily as possible.
Panizzi sometimes used the standard convention of separating out
dictionaries and encyclopedias into separate entries for easier searching and
access. Lubetzky acknowledge the occasional
convenience of this, but ultimately argued that the standard scheme should
apply to all books, so that users aren’t left guessing where to look up a
certain book.
In
my opinion, the convention of the reference section could be an exact corollary
of the convenience of separate cataloging, but the impracticality of creating a
different system for a different type of resource. Items in reference, such as dictionaries and
encyclopedias, would have been in Panizzi’s separate catalog, and they are not
cataloged separately, as Lubetzky advocated, but simply located separately for
easier reference.
Overall,
I empathize strongly with Panizzi’s practical, utilitarian systems and the need
for them. Lubetzky’s criticisms, in
terms of respecting more modern name changes in authorship etc. are valid, especially
in terms of card catalogs, but the universality and ease of Panizzi’s systems
seem to outweigh the concerns of authorship confusion. I think in a modern setting, where author
pseudonyms can be linked via search engines and made just as searchable as an
author’s real name, Panizzi’s system seems more favorable. I agree with the article’s sentiment that
Panizzi and Lubetzky were contemporaries separated by a century, mostly because
I found Panizzi’s work to be so far ahead of his time.
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