In addition, cataloging data is optimized to support each task and seeks to maximize the user's chances of success in their efforts. Standard cataloging principles, rules, and practices have developed over the past century, and contemporary cataloging databases embody high standards of information quality. Considerable effort has been expended by catalogers throughout the world, working cooperatively to promote this quality. Cataloging principles promote the user's ability to find a desired object in several ways. Rules and practices seek to identify those attributes of a bibliographic entity most likely to satisfy a user's query.
Further practices seek to insure that all variant forms of name are retrievable.
This practice is commonly known as authority control and is the single most significant contribution of catalogers to the retrieval process. Rules and practices that base the conventional form of names, titles, etc., on literary warrant or the common usage within the universe of bibliographic entities. Cataloging principles promote the user's ability to identify a retrieved entity, i.e., to determine whether that entity indeed satisfies the user's query and to distinguish among entities with similar attributes. Therefore, a bibliographic description is constructed by transcribing information from prominent sources within the item, e.g., from the title page of a book. However, it also applies to such information as technical requirements for using the material.