Problems for Catalogers One of the main reasons why catalogers are hesitant to take on the responsibility for cataloging websites is their concern for record maintenance . Maintenance is nothing new for catalogers. In the world of physical documents, items change constantly, e.g. a slight change is made to the text of a book, and results in an extra page. Everything is the same as the older items, except that all new books are printed with an extra page. Another book may have a very minor difference in the title from one printing to the next.
Magazines arrive constantly and often change their titles.
A new, revised version of a book is published, etc. Catalogers have extensive rules and practices to help them deal with these situations, but no matter what they do with the varying items, in the end, all the records they have made for both the earlier and later versions, will remain valid and correct. Also, the question of cataloger notification is never even raised. The appropriate people are notified when the item is received and goes through the library's work flow. Once a physical item has been taken into a library's possession, it cannot change.