A system for analyzing cataloging rules: A feasibility study

The quality control of cataloging standards is as important as the quality control of bibliographic records. In order to aid the quality control of cataloging standards, a prototype system to analyze the ambiguity and complexity of cataloging rules was developed. Before developing the system, a standard rule unit was defined and a simple, function‐like format was devised to indicate the syntactic structure of each unit rule. The AACR2 Chapter 1 rules were then manually transformed into this function‐like, unit rule format. The system reads the manually transformed unit rules and puts them into their basic forms based on their syntactic components. The system then applies rule‐templates, which are skeletal schemata for specific types of cataloging rules, to the converted rules. As a result of this rule‐template application, the internal structure of each unit rule is determined. The system is also used to explore inter‐rule relationships. That is, the system determines whether two rules have an exclusive, parallel, complementary, or non‐relationship. These relationships are based on the analysis of the structural parts described above in terms of the given rule‐template. To assist in this process, the system applies external knowledge represented in the same fashion as the rule units themselves. Although the prototype system can handle only a restricted range of rules, the proposed approach is positively validated and shown to be useful. However, it is possibly impractical to build a complete rule‐analyzing system of this type at this stage. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.