UCLA

The objects of the catalog, adopted internationally in 1961, assume that it is useful to display to users all the editions of a sought work, in order to enable the user to choose the best edition for his or her needs. No user study has ever divided so-called known item searchers into two groups: 1) those who benefit from the first objective alone; and 2) those who benefit from the second objective. Logic and common sense lead one to suspect that most users benefit from the second objective, and that multiple-edition works by prolific authors, those requiring the most cataloger effort to achieve collocation, are probably also the most frequently sought works.