Cataloguing pop music recordings at the British Library

摘要

Pop music recordings pose a particularly challenging task to any library when attempting to successfullycatalogue what are unique non-print, multi-format collection items often with numerous contributors andauthors. This is particularly true of the British Library (BL). Even though recorded music is not included in LegalDeposit legislation (instead the BL implements a far reaching voluntary deposit scheme with recordcompanies), the Sound Archive at the British Library has a huge collection of pop music, in fact one of thelargest in the world, comprising over 1 million discs and 185,000 tapes (BL Website, 2016. www.bl.uk/subjects/sound). The multi-performer/multi-author nature of pop music, combined with the bewildering array of subgenres that come under the broad term of pop music, added to the fact that changes in technology have led tothe same releases on various formats (LPs, 7” and 12” singles, EPs, CDs, box sets, and now digitaldownloads), means that the cataloguing of recorded pop music is a very tricky business. The BL Sound andMoving Image catalogue (SAMI) has been designed so as to overcome the very particular problems that soundand vision collection items raise for libraries.