union catalog

noun

1. a catalog containing bibliographic records that indicate locations of materials in more than one library or in several units of one library.

Word History and Origins

Origin of union catalog¹

An Americanism dating back to 1905–10

Example Sentences

She joined the Library of Congress as a research assistant in the early 1970s and helped compile the National Union Catalog, a several-hundred-volume compendium of books held in U.S. and Canadian libraries.

From Washington Post

The idea behind a union catalog is to earn time by avoiding the cataloging of the same document by many catalogers worldwide.

From Project Gutenberg

If the record is not available, they create it in their own catalog and export it into the union catalog, for the new record to be instantly available to all catalogers of member libraries.

From Project Gutenberg

What exactly is a union catalog?

From Project Gutenberg

Location of items is indicated either by a Library of Congress call number or location symbol, or, for material in another library, by the National Union Catalog symbol for that library.

From Project Gutenberg