catalogues

A catalog is a systematic listing of items in a collection or inventory, accompanied by descriptive data such as title, creator, date, and location. Catalogues are used to aid discovery, reference, and management, and may serve commercial as well as scholarly purposes. The spelling catalogues is British English; catalogs is American.

Catalogues cover several domains, including library catalogs for books and manuscripts, museum catalogs for artworks and objects, and product catalogs used in sales. They may describe physical items or digital resources and are often organized by access points such as author, title, subject, or classification. Metadata supports search and retrieval.

Historically, catalogs have existed since antiquity. Early libraries compiled handwritten inventories, and the advent of printing led to printed catalogs in the 15th and 16th centuries. The card catalog became widespread in the 19th and early 20th centuries, and digital catalogs based on databases and online catalogs emerged in the late 20th century.

Cataloging relies on metadata standards and cataloging rules to describe items consistently. In libraries, MARC formats, AACR2 or RDA, and authority data organize access points; for digital resources, Dublin Core and other schemas are common. Controlled vocabularies and subject headings improve precision and interoperability.

Today, catalogs continue to evolve with linked data, open catalogs, and semantic web technologies. Modern catalogs emphasize searchability, multilingual access, and accessibility, providing interfaces for browsing, filtering, and exporting records across libraries, museums, archives, and commercial suppliers.