Many authors and librarians have disagreed about this matter. Whether bibliography is science or a method.
Louise-Noelle Malcles, librarian, describes the bibliography as a science since it has an objective, a scientific method, and a purpose.
Malcles says “bibliography is the book science that searches, shows, describes and classifies the print documents with the purpose of building a repertory, to facilitate the intellectual work.”
Now a days many authors disagree, and they think that it´s just a method is part of a science. That it´s part of the bibliology: the science that studies books.
Other authors believe that bibliography is just an auxiliary science to librarianship. Whatever the meaning of the bibliography; this is the method to make a bibliography.
Bibliographic method
For the elaboration of a bibliography there are 3 steps:
-First: search and register the works of the same subject.
-Second: works descriptions: the intellectual content and the external elements of the works. Bibliographies can vary in the level of description. They can be more or less thorough.
-Third: they are classified chronologically, alphabetically, geographically, or systematically.
In the first step of the bibliographic method, there are a few sources that can help us with the search. They can be direct or indirect reference sources.
These reference sources give us a bit of information about the works that we are researching and that we want to add to the bibliography.
Direct reference sources:
-Chronologies
- Dictionaries
-Biographic Dictionaries
-Encyclopaedic dictionaries or Encyclopaedias
-Directories
-Guides
Indirect reference sources:
-Summary Bulletins
-Catalogues
-Bibliographies or bibliographic repertories
The second step it refers to the bibliographic description. This description has two aspects: the external elements and the intellectual content.
-The description of the external element must follow the rule ISO-690 “ the minimum details that will permit the identification of the publication whether is partial or complete…”: author, translator, the complete title of the work, publication date, publisher and material components.
-The intellectual content of the work that is a summary. The summary annotations ( is a concise summary) or a critical summary (more extensive, style, purpose, content structure…)
The third step is about the layout of the content according to the classification. Example: a national bibliography will be classified by subjects; a specialist bibliography will be classified by the authors’ works, etc.
This is the bibliographic method. If one day you want to make one, this information will help you!
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