Project History
The Library of Congress began its union catalog project in 1901 in an attempt to locate and note the location of a copy of every important book in the United States. With financial assistance from John D. Rockefeller Jr., the collection grew to over 11 million cards. Copies of these cards were distributed to a number of libraries around the country. Eventually the cards for all materials catalogued by the cooperating libraries were reproduced and issued serially in printed volumes as the National Union Catalog, supplementing the Library of Congress Catalog of Printed Books. Monthly NUC catalogs were cumulated quarterly, annually, and multi-annually.
In an effort to simplify research, it was decided in the 1960s to collect and publish all of the references to pre-1956 imprints in a single alphabetical listing. Mansell Information/Publishing Ltd., the company which created the British Museum library catalog, won the contract to publish the proposed union catalog. Over the next 14 years, about five 600-page volumes were published each month until the NUC of Pre-1956 Imprints was completed, largely superseding the older Library of Congress Catalog of Printed Books.
Read more about this topic: National Union Catalog
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