When you describe a book in a library catalog, you do describe the physical attributes of the book. Specifically, one describes size and page count. Other areas described in a bibliographic record include the parties responsible for the book, the title, and the publisher. There are at the bottom of any record a series of fields called the "6XX" fields. These fields (in a MARC record) are for subject headings and descriptions. In the most stringent interpretation, these fields (and the terms in them) are only supposed to be filled with terms that describe what the item is "about." Let's look at a record from the Carter for one of my favorite illustrated books:
Abraham Lincoln : biography in woodcuts / by Charles Turzak.
(Hopefully the permalink works - we are still working on that)
The first "subject" field (a 600 in this case) is very much describing what this item is about - Abraham Lincoln. However, the next two "subjects" (a 655 and a 690) describe what the book "is:" an illustrated book, illustrated with woodcuts. A biography of Lincoln would fall at the fringes of the collection development policy of the Carter, except that this is a biography in woodcuts. The illustrations are the reason for its inclusion in the collection - in this case the "is" trumps the "about" for our purposes. Of course, in the record, the pertinent bibliographic data is recorded, but the classification (in the 090) in a specific area set up for illustrated books, as well as the 655 and 690 indicate the "is" as well as the array of 500's.
This truly is something that is unique to art museum library settings - the book both as information container, as well as an art object unto itself. So, I suppose in this setting, the cataloger must use their judgement as to what one should describe in a record - and document it thoroughly!
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