catalogued

Catalogued is the past tense and past participle form of catalog or catalogue, meaning that an item has been listed in a catalog or index. The spelling catalogued is the British variant; cataloged is the American variant. The verb can also imply the process of creating a catalog, including recording details, assigning identifiers, and organizing items by subject, date, or classification. As an adjective, catalogued describes items that have been included in such a listing, for example, the artifacts are catalogued in the national collection.

Etymology and historical usage trace the term to Late Latin catalogus, via Old French catalogue, from the Greek katálogos “a list, roll” (from kata- ‘down’ + logós ‘speech, word’). The term has been in English since the 15th century, originally in the sense of a printed or manuscript list of items.

In libraries and archives, cataloguing is a formal procedure that records bibliographic metadata and locational information, assigns a call number or shelf mark, and links to stored items. In museums, cataloguing describes physical artifacts and their provenance. In scientific contexts, cataloguing involves listing specimens or records in databases, often with standardized metadata, identifiers, and taxonomic information. Digital repositories use metadata schemas such as Dublin Core or MARC to support searchability and interoperability.

Catalogued collections facilitate discovery, tracking, and preservation, and they enable interoperability across catalogs and platforms. Accuracy in cataloguing is important for provenance and access, and misclassification can hinder retrieval.