Cataloging Legal Literature

Cataloging Legal Literature, 5th Edition

Cataloging Legal Literature, Fifth Edition (CLL5) describes the authors’ understanding of the current descriptive and subject
cataloging practices for legal materials. It addresses the needs of large and small law libraries alike, particularly those who wish to
follow national cataloging standards, including the Library of Congress and the Program for Cooperative Cataloging. CLL5 addresses
RDA instructions and terminology as found in both the current RDA Toolkit and its beta site.

CLL5 is not a general self‑help book for the beginning cataloger. The goal is to help the law cataloger deal with the ambiguities of
21st century cataloging. The questions, some unanswered, posed here are to help a cataloger analyze materials and think like a law
cataloger (just like a first-year law student has to learn to think like a lawyer). The authors’ intent is to supplement existing primary
and secondary cataloging sources by discussing and examining cataloging practices for legal materials.

Throughout the manual, illustrations of descriptive or subject cataloging and MARC tags are offered. Examples of subject cataloging
are based on guidelines published in the Library of Congress’ Subject Cataloging Manual (SCM), as well as identifying Library of
Congress practices for assigning subject headings.

CLL5 must be used in conjunction with RDA, LCSH, SHM, and general handbooks on descriptive and subject cataloging. This manual
does not provide a full discussion on all of the RDA instructions or Library of Congress subject headings; only those that represent
common problems for legal materials have been included. While much attention is paid to standards, flexible thinking about the
needs of the law user is also one of the authors’ goals.

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Melody Lembke - Recipients of the 2020 Marian Gould Gallagher Distinguished Service Award​

Melody is retired as the Associate Director, Collection Services at University of California, Irvine Law Library. Since the school began in 2009, she helped build a largely electronic Law Library collection while keeping current on RDA. Melody is a co-author of all four editions of CLL, as well as the former compiler for Supplement to Subject Headings for the Literature of Law and International Law, and Index to LC K Schedules. She admits to being an AALL member for over 40 years.

Melissa Beck

Melissa is the Head of Cataloging at the UCLA Law Library. She is a long-time member of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging (PCC), and has developed cataloging manuals, training materials, and workshops for serials, integrating resources, and electronic resources. She admits to never having cataloged a treaty.