Goal

Charles Ammi 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

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)

These objectives can still be recognized in more modern definitions formulated throughout the 20th century. 1960/61 Cutter's objectives were revised by Lubetzky and Lubetzky and the Conference on Cataloging Principles (CCP) in Paris. The latest attempt to describe a library catalog's goals and functions was made in 1998 with Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) which defines four user tasks: find, identify, select, and obtain.