Cataloging

Descriptive Cataloging, Descriptive Indexing in Legal Information Retrieval

The following is a basic concept of Descriptive Cataloging, Descriptive Indexing in relation to information retrieval. In addition to this, Descriptive Cataloging, Descriptive Indexing may be applied to legal texts, including case law, legislation and scholarly works. Descriptive cataloging is an old and honorable term that refers to the description and indexing of texts and documents with respect to features other than the content, purpose, or meaning of the texts message. Such features include the authors and other creators of texts (editors, composers, illustrators, translators, artists, etc.); the names or titles of texts (including subtitles, parallel titles, alternate titles, running titles etc.); the publishers or manufacturers and distributors of documents; the size and medium of documents; and the symbol set and code used to encode the text. Codes and symbols used to encode texts include natural languages and their writing systems (French, German, Chinese), but also codes and symbols for music, dance, chemistry, mathematics, etc., and, at another level, codes for the representation of messages in digital media. Names and index terms are established for the most important of these features. Descriptive cataloging (along with subject cataloging) is part of the process for making a catalog. Descriptive indexing is a rarely used term for the same process outside of the context of catalogs for particular collections of documents.