DOCUMENTATION NOTES: THE ANGLO‐AMERICAN CATALOGUING RULES (BRITISH TEXT): A NOTE OF WELCOME

To cataloguers in all kinds of libraries conditioned by impatient years of waiting for what has confidently been supposed to inaugurate a new era of cataloguing practice, the sense of occasion created by the recent publication of the Anglo‐American Cataloguing Rules, British Text has been only slightly diminished by the length of time by which it followed the parallel North American Text of nearly a year before. Yet the essential differences between this code and its predecessors have already been revealed, for many people, by the North American Text; and for those whose interest now lies mainly in weighing the relative utility of the British and American versions, the time‐lag in publication may in itself suggest a relationship between the bodies mainly responsible for the new code in which the dominant roles appear to be those of the American Library Association and the Library of Congress, with the (British) Library Association toiling along in their wake.