Bibliographic Manuals

systematized information concerning published works, compiled as a result of bibliographical activity and having primarily the form of indexes, lists, and surveys of literature.

An index of literature, or bibliographic index, is a bibliographic manual of relatively large size and with a complex structure (for example, with a multistage classification of entries) and auxiliary indexes which deal with the material under consideration in its various aspects. A list of literature is a bibliographic manual of relatively small size with a simple structure and without auxiliary indexes. A survey is the description of the literature on a problem in the form of a connected text, most frequently with reference to the external information concerning specific published works in footnotes or an attached appendix.

Bibliographic manuals may be distinguished according to the following criteria: (1) the purpose and readership for which it is intended (scholarly work, self-education, and so forth), (2) entry items (books, official publications, dissertations, periodical publications, articles, reviews, etc.), (3) subject matter (general and specialized manuals), (4) completeness of entries (exhaustive and selective manuals), (5) the method of dealing with published works (registration, annotated, and abstract manuals), (6) the method of distributing bibliographic entries (alphabetical, chronological, systematic, thematic, subject, and dictionary manuals), and (7) time of publication of literature (current, retrospective, and prospective manuals).