A uniform title in

library catalog A library catalog (or library catalogue in British English) is a register of all bibliography, bibliographic items found in a library or group of libraries, such as a network of libraries at several locations. A catalog for a group of libra ...

ing is a distinctive

title A title is one or more words used before or after a person's name, in certain contexts. It may signify their generation, official position, military rank, professional or academic qualification, or nobility. In some languages, titles may be ins ...

assigned to a work which either has no title or has appeared under more than one title. Establishing a uniform title is an aspect of

authority control In information science, authority control is a process that organizes information, for example in library catalogs, by using a single, distinct spelling of a name (heading) or an identifier (generally persistent and alphanumeric) for each top ...

. The phrases conventional title and standard title are sometimes used; Resource Description and Access uses preferred title; while the 2009 Statement of International Cataloguing Principles deprecates "uniform title" in favour of authorized access point. There are many instances in which a uniform title can be used. Anonymous works such as

sacred texts Religious texts, including scripture, are texts which various religions consider to be of central importance to their religious tradition. They often feature a compilation or discussion of beliefs, ritual practices, moral commandments and ...

and folk tales may lack an obvious title: for instance, the

Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

, ''

Epic of Gilgamesh The ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' () is an epic poetry, epic from ancient Mesopotamia. The literary history of Gilgamesh begins with five Sumerian language, Sumerian poems about Gilgamesh (formerly read as Sumerian "Bilgames"), king of Uruk, some of ...

'', ''

Beowulf ''Beowulf'' (; ) is an Old English poetry, Old English poem, an Epic poetry, epic in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 Alliterative verse, alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and List of translat ...

'', or the ''

Chanson de Roland The ''Song of Roland'' () is an 11th-century based on the deeds of the Frankish kingdom, Frankish military leader Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in AD 778, during the reign of the Charlemagne, Emperor Charlemagne. It is the oldest surv ...

''. Works of art and

music Music is the arrangement of sound to create some combination of Musical form, form, harmony, melody, rhythm, or otherwise Musical expression, expressive content. Music is generally agreed to be a cultural universal that is present in all hum ...

may contain no text that can be used for reference. A uniform title allows all versions of the work to

collocate In corpus linguistics, a collocation is a series of words or terms that co-occur more often than would be expected by chance. In phraseology, a collocation is a type of compositional phraseme, meaning that it can be understood from the words t ...

under one title and will reference all of the items to which the uniform title applies. For example, if a library has 10 copies of '' Crime and Punishment'', each in a different language, an online library catalogue can display all of the copies of the book together under the chosen uniform title. The library could also list any copies of ''Crime and Punishment'' in other media, such as film adaptations or abridged editions, under the same uniform title. This can help a library patron when searching the online catalog find all of the versions of ''Crime and Punishment'' at once instead of searching for each foreign title or film individually. Uniform titles are particularly useful when cataloguing music, where pieces of music are often known by multiple valid titles and those titles are known in multiple languages, or when an individual work has been adapted as a contrafactum. The

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

provides an example of how books of the

New Testament The New Testament (NT) is the second division of the Christian biblical canon. It discusses the teachings and person of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus, as well as events relating to Christianity in the 1st century, first-century Christianit ...

are referred to in the

Anglo-American Cataloging Rules ''Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules'' (AACR) were an international library cataloging Technical standard, standard. First published in 1967 and edited by C. Sumner Spalding, a second edition (AACR2) edited by Michael Gorman (librarian), Michael G ...

:- Bible. N.T. Acts :- Bible. N.T. Colossians :- Bible. N.T. Corinthians, 1st :- Bible. N.T. Corinthians, 2nd :- Bible. N.T. Ephesians ...

Example:

edition being cataloged: Othello / William Shakespeare

established uniform title: Shakespeare, William ... Othello

no uniform title assigned to the edition being cataloged

Example:

edition being cataloged: The tempest / William Shakespeare

established uniform title: Shakespeare, William ... Tempest

The complementary situation occurs with a single work that exists with more than one title, especially when translated into another language, excerpted or collected with other works. In this case, the name of the language or a phrase such as 'Selections' is added to distinguish works with the same uniform title. The MARC 21 standard uses fields 240, 243, 630, 730 and 830 for uniform titles.

References

External links

* Reitz, Joan M
ODLIS: Online Dictionary for Library and Information Science. U.
Library cataloging and classification Identifiers {{Library-stub