A research on measuring the consistency of cataloging in libraries of universities in Turkey

The aim of this study is to investigate the cataloging consistency of university libraries in Turkey. In order to figure out the differences in MARC records, catalogs of seven universities were examined. In the study, elements of libraries were firtstly examined to see whether they are consistently cataloged in terms of main entry, title statement and area of responsibility, edition statement, publication, distribution (etc.), physical description area, series area, and added entries areas according to AAKK2 and RDA which can be considered as mostly accepted cataloging rule recently, and secondly, the consistencies of universities were compared. Findings of this study demonstrate that there are significant rates of inconsistency in access points of examined elements. The highest numbers of inconsistencies among all universities were found in the areas of title, statement and areas of responsibility and series statement fields and the lowest numbers of inconsistency was found in the areas of edition statement, publication, distribution. The fingings demonstrates that, the universities which have lesser number of elements have highest inconsistencies. This situation implies that the consistency in library cataloging does not depend on the number of the elements a library has, it depends on the rate of adherence to the scientific cataloging rules such as AAKK2 and RDA.