The third edition of Lois Mai Chan's classic Cataloging and Classification covers the analysis and representation of methods used in describing, organizing, and providing access to resources made available in or through libraries, including both the materials owned by the library (mostly physical items such as books, journals, and nonprint materials) and external resources such as those in electronic form that are accessible through the library's portal. Chan emphasizes the standards for bibliographic control that were developed over the years and have been widely adopted in the library field; reports on recent developments in the retrieval arena; and discusses a number of widely used metadata schemas in order to provide a brief overview of this important movement closely related to resource description.

Divided into six parts—a general overview; resource description; access and authority control; subject representation access; the classification and categorization of library resources; and the encoding and processing of cataloging records—each part of the book begins with a list of the standards and tools used in the preparation and processing of that part of the cataloging record covered, followed by suggested background readings selected to help the reader gain an overview of the subject to be presented. Fully updated to incorporate changes that have occurred during the interval between the second and third editions, this book is the standard text for the teaching and understanding of cataloging and classification.