ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules

Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR) is a set of instructions that helps people organize and describe library resources like books, journals, and other materials so that they can be easily found and used.

Think of it like organizing your toy box. You have to put your toys away so that you know where to find them. AACR helps librarians put books and other materials away in a way that makes sense and is easy to find again later.

AACR has rules for things like what information to include in the description or title of the resource, how to write down the author's name, and what subject headings to use. Just like you might group your toys together based on what they have in common (like all your dolls in one spot and all your cars in another), AACR helps librarians group resources together based on what they are about.

These rules are important because they help people find what they are looking for quickly and easily. If you wanted to find a book about dinosaurs, you would look under the "D" section of the library, but if librarians didn't follow AACR rules to categorize books under specific subjects, you might have a hard time finding the book.

In short, AACR is like a set of instructions that helps librarians organize books and other materials in a way that makes it easy for people to find and use them.