National Bibliographies

摘要

In the world of global information, the concept of a national bibliography (NB/NBs) might seem quaintly old fashioned and frankly 'bookish'. Yet even in this networked world national bibliographies - each nation responsible for recording its own published output, ideally based on legal deposit - remains the most comprehensive way of tracking that output. This is clear from the papers on electronic national bibliographies, which took pride of place as the opening session of the recent 69th IFLA General Conference and Council in Berlin. The session included four papers: the perpetuation and of die national bibliographies in the new virtual information environment; Electronic national bibliographies: state of the art review; guidelines for electronic national bibliographies: are they needed?; and future role of (electronic) national bibliographies (they are available on the IFLA web site -www.ifla.org/). National bibliographies are increasingly appearing in an electronic form only and die papers identify not only why they continue to be the essential record of the national output, but also issues that need to be addressed when producing them in an electronic format.