Cornell Law Library Myron Taylor Hall Ithaca, New York 14853
Cornell Law Library Annual Report 1980/81
This year was one of great changes in the Technical Services Department and of incremental increases in the work of the Public Services Department of the Law Library
I.
Technical Services
On January 2, 1981, this library, along with most libraries in the English-speaking world, adopted a new set of cataloging rules.
Non-librarians
may consider this an inconsequential detail, but librarians found that the planning for and implementation of the change presented many challenges.
Not
only did all librarians have to understand the changes, but each had to implement them in a manner least confusing to those using the library materials. The rules for cataloging primary legal materials changed drastically, so the impact of the change was particularly severe for law libraries.
Two of the
most noticable changes are (1) that many works are now cataloged under the name of the jurisdiction with uniform titles, rather than the old subdivisions for laws or treaties; and (2) that many more works are entered under title now than were before.
When we have an on-line catalog with multiple access
points, these changes will be less noticable.
A separate card catalog was
started for works cataloged after the magic date of January 2, 1981.
This
avoided the complex cross-references that would have been required if old and new were filed together.
Moreover, this is a temporary catalog, for computers