Charles Cutter's Objectives

We were asked to look up Charles Cutter's objectives and rewrite them so that they are more suitable for libraries today.

Vanessa Small added the following information to the forum. I think she has done an excellent job rewriting them so I have published them exactly as she wrote them. (Thanks Vanessa) I have also included the link to the webpage that has the objectives listed.

Charles Cutter made the first explicit statement regarding the objectives of a bibliographic system in his Rules for a Printed Dictionary Catalog in 1876. According to Cutter, those objectives were:

1. to enable a person to find a book of which either (Identifying objective)

* the author
* the title
* the subject
* the category

is known.

2. to show what the library has (Collocating objective)

* by a given author
* on a given subject
* in a given kind of literature

3. to assist in the choice of a book (Evaluating objective)

* as to its edition (bibliographically)
* as to its character (literary or topical)

In today's library these would be greatly different. Although they could be kept in the same format I would reword them to be:

1. to enable a person to find information of which either (Identifying objective)

* the author
* the title
* the subject
* the category

is known.

2. to show what the library has online or in hardcopy (Collocating objective)

* by a given author
* on a given subject
* in a given kind of format

3. to assist in the choice of information (Evaluating objective)

* as to its format
* as to its character (literary or topical)

Other objectives in today's society would also be appropriate in terms of making specific objectives for online resources and specific objectives for hardcopy resources.