Cataloging Music Sound Recordings in the United States: An Evolution of Practice and Standards

The bibliographic control of sound recordings has been an issue ever since libraries began acquiring them. The description of recordings is generally more difficult than that for print materials, due to the prominence of both composers, as creators of the works recorded, and the performer(s) of these works, and also to the anthology-like nature of many recordings. One of the foremost problems with recordings is whether to catalog each work on the recording separately or the entire recording as a unit. The variety of ways in which works have been packaged has necessitated changes to cataloging and description standards over the years in order to consistently display information to users to support their decision making. This account looks back at how the cataloging of sound recordings has been handled over the decades, to provide a historical context in which to place the development and adoption of Resource Description and Access (RDA) as it relates to description and access of sound recordings.