Archival Cataloging and the Archival Sensibility

If you ask catalogers about the relationship between bibliographic and archival cataloging, more likely than not their answers will stress divergence over convergence. Potential arguments about the differences encompass issues surrounding books versus manuscript materials, items versus collections, and an emphasis on artifactual description versus content and context description. The truly divergent cases should not distract us from the significant areas of convergence, however. In particular, the cataloging of rare books and materials shows meaningful similarities across bibliographic and archival cataloging. There is a real benefit to focusing on where practices converge. Focusing on convergence provides the advantage of allowing . . .