The Indian National Bibliography: today and tomorrow

A National Bibliography reflects cultural heritage of the nation and preserves it for the future generation. It also plays a major tool for national bibliographic control. Government of India entrusted Central Reference Library (CRL), Kolkata, Govt. of India, Ministry of Culture, to publish the Indian National Bibliography (INB), an authoritative bibliographical record of current Indian publications. INB is unique when compared with other National bibliographies since 14 languages come under one umbrella. This article analyses the role of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in contributing to the INB to reach its present position. Also discusses about the problems faced in alphabetical arrangement of INB, while integrating Indian language scripts having the heterogeneous characteristics in one sequence. In the initial stage CDAC’s GIST technology was used for entering the language records. Now INB records are entered using UNICODE and follow the MARC 21 standards. As per the guidelines of International Conference on National Bibliographic Services (ICNBS) 1998, CRL started to record the bibliographic details in the original script of the document and transliterated all the fields for the National Bibliography. Thus Central Reference Library is in a position to publish INB in Roman script as well as 14 language bibliographies in their language scripts simultaneously after the implementation of UNICODE compliant software. This article also discusses the poor coverage and lack of comprehensiveness of Indian National Bibliography, the measures to improve its coverage, and need for strengthening the Delivery of Books Act (D. B. Act) of India. The authors try to examine the Cataloguing in Publication (CIP) programme in India and the need for the collaboration with INB.