Everything in cataloging a book to an artifact to an online resource is done to enable patrons to find the information contained in these items. It would do no good to own thousand of monographs that no one could easily find the information they hold. Controlled language and call numbers have enable libraries to catagorize and organize the information each monograph contains. Yes, this information was written on card catalogs for many years and computers have improved this process tremendously. We can now add as many subject headings in a record as we want and it is very hard to loose a computer record opposed to an index card. When a patron retrieves information on a subject, he can quickly see all the materials available on that subject, their format and location.
Many things have stayed the same in information retrieval in libraries. Call numbers, controlled language and storage of items have not changed. We still need to go to the shelf to get a book and we use the call number to locate it. What has improved is the speed and accuracy (Chan, 2007).
Chan, L. (2007). Cataloging and classification: An introduction, 2nd edition. The Scarecrow Press, Lanham, Maryland.
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