摘要：SOME time ago when the Library of Congress was occupying the Main Building only, before the Annex was built, a group of sightseers was being shown through the Library. The party had just left the Reading Room and was being conducted past the Official Catalog, the working tool of the catalogers, when I heard one of the visitors ask: "Is this catalog also for the customers?" The term "customers" in this connotation sounded strange to me then, and for all our present awareness of consumer demand, would sound strange to me even now. But whichever term we apply to the user of our catalogs, he is the consumer of the product of the cataloger's labors. It is axiomatic that the better the consumer knows how to use a product the more he gets out of it. The bibliographer, by the very nature of his work, should be the best consumer of the subject cataloger's product. For that reason, perhaps, it will not be amiss to summarize here what subject cataloging is and how it can be used to best advantage in the initial stages of compiling a bibliography, and, to some extent, in organizing bibliographic material by subject.
