A system for analyzing cataloging rules: A feasibility study

The quality control of cataloging standards is as important as the quality control of bibliographic records. In order to aid the quality control of cataloging standards, a prototype system to analyze the ambiguity and complexity of cataloging rules was developed. Before developing the system, a standard rule unit was defined and a simple, function-like format was devised to indicate the syntactic structure of each unit rule. The AACR2 Chapter 1 rules were then manually transformed into this function-like, unit rule format. The system reads the manually transformed unit rules and puts them into their basic forms based on their syntactic components. The system then applies rule-templates, which are skeletal schemata for specific types of cataloging rules, to the converted rules. As a result of this rule-template application, the internal structure of each unit rule is determined. The system is also used to explore inter-rule relationships. That is, the system determines whether two rules have an exclusive, parallel, complementary, or non-relationship. These relationships are based on the analysis of the structural parts described above in terms of the given rule-template. To assist in this process, the system applies external knowledge represented in the same fashion as the rule units themselves. Although the prototype system can handle only a restricted range of rules, the proposed approach is positively validated and shown to be useful. However, it is possibly impractical to build a complete rule-analyzing system of this type at this stage.