Seymour Lubetzky

Na této stránce pracuje Eva Křížková.

Seymour Lubetzky (28. dubna 1898 – 5. dubna 2003) byl významným teoretikem v oblasti knihovnictví, knihovníkem, ale také spisovatelem a pedagogem. Známý se stal díky katalogizačním pravidlům, principům a zásadám. Lubetzky je dnes označován za jednoho z největších myslitelů v oblasti knihovnictví a katalogizace. Zemřel v Los Angeles, ve věku 104 let.

Seymour Lubetzky as a Teacher of Cataloging Michael Carpenter INTRODUCTION Seymour Lubetzky, Professor Emeritus of the library school at the University of California at Los Angeles, had a great impact on librarianship during the middle of the twentieth century, not only through his writing and his work on catalog code revision, but also as a teacher of future librarians. The milieu and conceptual back- ground in which Lubetzky taught are described, as well as the possible sources of his teaching-methodology. The writer suggests that a return to Lubetzky's teaching methodology could well revive the interest of students in cataloging. Scope Seymour Lubetzky, the subject of this article, has had an incalcu- lable but large impact on cataloging in the twentieth century both as a librarian and as a library school professor, both as a writer and as a teacher. If it is as a teacher alone that I consider Lubetzky here, itMichael Carpenter 187 ic description had become increasingly baroque and unsystematic in American cataloging codes. Starting as early as 1902, the Library of Congress (LC) had been issuing rules and exceptions to rules in the form of cards. Even the 1908 cataloging code contained many Library of Congress exceptions and supplementary rules for de- scription.15 As time passed, a full set of such rules took up a box over a foot long. The 1941 draft code included some of their text as well as material contained in previously published separate guides for cataloging periodicals, the periodical publications of societies and institutions, music and manuscripts. Since the editors of the 1941 draft code, completed in 1939, perceived it as their task to expand the code, any search for objectives for the code and for bibliographic description in particular were abandoned.16 When Lubetzky first started work at LC in February 1943, he was first assigned the task of trying to simplify the rules for cataloging de- scription. This he did by establishing a set of objectives, contained in a 1943 draft set of rules.17 After this set of objectives and rules were tested in an experiment described in Studies of Descriptive Cataloging, they were eventually canonized in revised form in the green book. Although progress had been made in the realm of description, Lubetzky, now having planned the publication of LC's book cata- logs, was directed to tum his attention to the problems of entry and heading. The 1949 red book represented even greater elaboration of the rules of entry and heading than did the 1941 preliminary edition. , By 1953, he had submitted two drafts and the final publication of Cataloging Rules and Principles to the profession, an action which resulted in his being named editor for a new cataloging code; this code was to go through three drafts, the last of which appeared in 1961. During this process, his work was recognized by its forming the foundations of the Paris Principles. In addition to the draft drafts, much of Lubetzky's analytical work for the 1954-1960 period can be found in articles he wrote for the library press, various conference proceedings, and the minutes of the meetings of section heads of the LC Descriptive Cataloging Division. Meanwhile, back in California, Lawrence Clark Powell was lay- ing the foundations for a library school at UCLA. He was deter- Downloaded by [Knihovna Cerge-Ei] at 07:54 19 January 2016 188 PORTRAITS IN CATALOGING AND CLASSIFICATION mined to find the best possible individuals for the new faculty. For the cataloging position, there was only one possible choice, Sey- mour Lubetzky. During a conversation with Lubetzky, Powell sug- gested that a monument just as lasting as his writings could be his students. Lubetzky accepted Powell's proposal and joined the new faculty in 1960, raising a generation of outstanding catalogers for the profession. He finally retired in 1968. Even after retirement he has contributed to the literature of our field, most importantly, Prin- ciples of Cataloging, l9 as well as other journal articles and papers in conference proceedings. CONCLUSION Today our field has a lack of visible objectives and principles in the text of AACR2, a "common denominator" approach to biblio- graphic description as found in the text of the various ISBDs in the name of standardization, without reference to an analysis of the real requirements for a catalog, a proliferation of rule interpretations leading to a rather mechanical but ultimately futile search for rules to cover the case in hand. All these can make for a miserable experience for students taking cataloging in library school today for the same reason Lubetzky suggested in "On Teaching Cataloging." Practice alone has little or no rationale. The promise of a search for reasons Lubetzky enunciates seems lost in many schools today, and has, it may be speculated, helped lead to the well-known loss of interest in cataloging. In short, a return to Lubetzky's mode of teaching seems justified if cataloging as a discipline within librari- anship is to survive.

CARPENTER, Michael. Seymour Lubetzky as a Teacher of Cataloging [online]. In: Cataloging & Classification Quarterly, 1998, 25(2-3), 181-190. [cit. 2016-19-01] Publikováno: 2009-23-10. Dostupné z: http://dx.doi.org/10.1300/J104v25n02_14. ISSN: 0163-9374 (Print) 1544-4554 (Online).

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/13/us/seymour-lubetzky-104-librarian-dies.html

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/Seymour-Lubetzky-UCLA-Professor-4141

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Informační věda, knihovnictví, knihovníci, katalogizace