S. Lubetzky, 104; Set Rules for Descriptive Library Cataloging

Seymour Lubetzky, a leading theorist in the field of descriptive cataloging who was instrumental in changing the way bibliographic information is organized, has died. He was 104.

Lubetzky was admitted to UCLA Medical Center on March 29 with pneumonia and died there of heart failure on April 5.

In a career spanning six decades, Lubetzky was not so much concerned with the organization of material by subject, but with establishing a consistent series of descriptors for authors and titles that would make cataloging more logical for both the cataloger and the researcher.

His theories came into widespread use in the 1960s and became guiding principles in libraries around the world.

“He was the greatest cataloging theorist of the 20th century,” said Maurice J. Freeman, president of the American Library Assn. “He represents the culmination of the development of the Anglo-American cataloging ideology that began with [scholars] in the 19th century.”

Aimee Dorr, dean of the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA, agreed: “His work was seminal and transformed both theory and practice, and it is as useful today as it was 50 years ago.”

Born in poverty in what was then the small Russian village of Zelwa, Lubetzky studied literature and languages. He taught at the primary and secondary levels when the village came under Polish control, before immigrating to the United States when he was in his late 20s.

He followed his two sisters and a brother to Los Angeles, and enrolled at UCLA, where he majored in languages -- he would eventually become fluent in six -- with the goal of becoming a literary scholar. He earned a bachelor’s degree there as well as a certificate in library science. He went on to Berkeley for a master’s degree, but after graduation found academic opportunities slim due to the Depression and a degree of anti-Semitism in the hiring practices of American universities at the time.

Lubetzky returned to UCLA in 1936, and worked as cataloger and classifier in the library. While there he became interested in the organizational problems of cataloging and was urged by mentors to write articles on the subject. He soon established a national reputation for his scholarly work.

But his work also had practical applications outside the library. In 1942, he joined the war effort at a Navy shipyard in the Bay Area. According to colleagues, Lubetzky discovered that money was being wasted because a part that could be easily used on different classes of ships often wasn’t because the part had a different name for each ship. He put his cataloging talents to work setting up a card file that cross-referenced the parts, enabling workers to understand their application on various ships.

He later noted that this was really what cataloging was all about: identification and the establishment of relationships.

In 1943, he went to work for the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Once there, he found a backlog of books waiting to be cataloged. The crux of the problem seemed to be problems with the Anglo-American catalog code then in use. For decades, rules had been added to this code in an ad hoc manner on a case-by-case basis. The result was a code full of inconsistencies, irrelevancies and redundancies.

In addressing the problem, Lubetzky vetted each of the rules against the objective of the cataloging, asking, “Is this rule necessary?” Many of them were not, and he proposed to eliminate them from the classification scheme.

He also urged a coherent set of principles that could apply to the classification of works from all types of institutions, instead of specific rules for specific types of institutions that bore no logical relation to each other.

The ‘60s proved to be the decade in which his theories would dominate cataloging worldwide.

An International Conference on Cataloging Principles was convened in Paris in 1961. It brought together representatives from 53 countries to discuss cataloging principles. Its high point came when Lubetzky read a paper that presented views that he had developed in the course of revising the catalog code. Many of his views prevailed at the conference and became the adopted standard in international cataloging.

The result of this conference was steady progress toward the goal of universal bibliographical control -- whereby all countries adhering to these principles catalog compatibly, the work of cataloging is shared internationally and the exchange of information is facilitated worldwide.

After the Paris conference, Lubetzky returned to UCLA, which he had joined in 1960 as a faculty member in the new School of Library Service. His course on descriptive cataloging became the intellectual core of the school’s master’s program. Lubetzky officially retired in 1969, but he continued to write, lecture and consult.

Colleagues recalled him as a passionate scholar who was also self-effacing, noting that his success had more to do with the guidance he received from a series of mentors than an innate gift he had for the discipline.

“He was vigorous, thoughtful and a great teacher,” UCLA’s Dorr said. “He was still an engaging speaker with wit and passion well past his 100th birthday. Some of the faculty would still visit him and talk about theory and practice of cataloging.”

Survivors include his two sons, David of Washington, D.C., and Richard of Los Angeles; and a grandson.

Services are scheduled for 2 p.m. today at Hillside Memorial Park in Los Angeles.