Catalogers' judgment has been frequently mentioned, but is rarely researched in formal studies. The purpose of this article is to investigate catalogers' judgment through an exploration of the texts collected in the database of Library and Information Science Source. Verbs, adjectives and nouns intimately associated with catalogers' judgment were extracted, analyzed and grouped into 16 categories, which lead to five conceptual descriptions. The results of this study provide cataloging professionals with an overall picture on aspects of catalogers' judgment, which may help library school students and graduates and novice catalogers to become independent and confident decision makers relating to cataloging work.

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With the emergence of digital collections in libraries, museums, and other cultural institutions, catalogers are redefining their roles by participating in digital projects, creating, maintaining, and developing non-traditional metadata records. This article provides a discussion on how catalogers are ensuring that the cataloging legacies of quality control, authority control, and creative cataloging become important components in the creation of descriptive metadata for digital projects.

This paper traces the historical development of library catalogs from primitive catalogs in ancient times to current next generational catalogs, which are summarized into three stages: the agricultural catalog stage, the industrial catalog stage and the information catalog stage. In particular, this paper focuses on the discussion of the rise of users’ expectations on library catalogs at different stages and gives emphasis to what impact they have created accordingly.