In
library and information science,
cataloging (or
cataloguing) is the process of creating
metadata representing information
resources, such as books, sound recordings, moving images, etc. Cataloging provides information such as creator names, titles, and subject terms that describe resources, typically through the creation of
bibliographic records. The records serve as surrogates for the stored information resources. Since the 1970s these metadata are in machine-readable form and are indexed by information retrieval tools, such as
bibliographic databases or
search engines. While typically the cataloging process results in the production of
library catalogs, it also produces other types of discovery tools for
documents and collections.