LIS Notes for Competitive Examinations 19 : Pre - natal Cataloguing

The term prenatal cataloguing was first used by Dr S R Ranganathan. 'Pre-natal' means before birth. Pre-natal cataloguing generally refers to the books catalogued prior to the publication of  books. It is also known as Cataloguing in Publication ( CIP ) or Cataloguing in Source. In this Process the cataloguing work is done by the National Library of a country before the book published by the publisher. This is done with the help of a copy of the form proof of each book sent by the publisher to the central library. The National  Library prepares a muster stencil of the catalogue cards for each book before its release. The catalogue cards are later made available for distribution to libraries on order along with the release of books themselves, Call numbers are also printed on the back of the title page. It helps libraries to get catalogue from the book itself. According to Dr Ranganathan, pre-natal cataloguing helps to saving 79% in the technical manpower of large library systems.

 The Cataloguing in Publication (CIP) programme was first initiated by Library of Congress  1971 with 27 participating publishers. The process of classification and cataloguing of a publication is done before the book is released. The cataloguing data provided by the Library of Congress is printed on the reverse of the title page which helps the individual libraries in copying down the data on their catalogue card.

Whereas the importance of this process is outdated by the introduction of WorldCat by the OCLC. It provides catalogue of millions of records free of cost world wide online.