International Cataloguing Tradition and Italian Rules: Common Ground and Specific Features

Many current cataloguing codes have their roots in a common tradition started by the 1961 Paris International Conference on Cataloguing Principles – ICCP. Since 1961, the construction of new national codes had been based on the sharing of cataloguing principles, on agreements for international cooperation, and on a common tradition. The new technological and international environment suggests, more and more, a redesign of those principles to include more suitable features and to assert firmly that the highest principle is the convenience of the users of the catalogue. Within this framework, the authors analyze the Italian cataloguing tradition and its relationships with the international tradition and recount the main activities towards a revision of the present Italian code – Regole italiane di catalogazione per autori RICA. The paper shows that, since the first Italian rules written by Fumagalli, special attention has been paid to the international tradition (in particular toward Panizzi’s rules). After describing the relationships among the international trends and the Italian codes of 1922, 1956 and 1979, the paper deals with the recent works of the new Commission that, since 1997, has started to revise RICA. The paper concludes by reflecting on the Italian position in the debate first on the ISBD and then on the new entity-relationship models