Bibliographic Relationships in Music Catalogs

An important function of any library catalog is to bring together bibliographic records for materials that are related to each other in some way. The achievement of this goal depends on identifying those relationships and then linking the catalog records for the related material. Music scores present an abundance of complex relationships because of the added dimensions created by performance, requiring library catalogs to link bibliographic records for scores, performance parts, sound recordings, video recordings, books, hyper-media computer programs, and other formats. In order to redesign library catalogs to take full advantage of today's sophisticated relational database structures, it is important to understand the exact nature of these relationships. This groundbreaking empirical study of music bibliographic relationships provides the fundamental information necessary to understand better the complexities of music cataloging and the impact of these complexities on the structure of the catalog. Vellucci's study identifies the characteristics of music scores found in a library collection, describes in detail the types of relationships that exist within the world of music materials, and discusses the various methods currently used to link related music materials in library catalogs. Essential for music libraries and collections.

Sherry L.Vellucci is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Library & Information Science, Rutgers University, New Jersey. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Music Library Association and the International Association of Music Libraries—U.S. Branch. She also received the MLA Special Achievement Award for her research on bibliographic relationships in music catalogs.