The Perfect Bibliographic Record: Platonic Ideal, Rhetorical Strategy or Nonsense?

Discussions of quality in library catalogs and bibliographic databases often refer to “the perfect record.” This paper examines the usage of that phrase in the library literature, finding that its predominant use is as a rhetorical strategy for reducing the complex and context-dependent issue of quality to an absurdity, thus permitting the author to ignore or dismiss all issues of quality. Five documents in which the phrase is not used in this fashion are examined and their value for understanding the inextricably intertwined values of quantity and quality are discussed. The author recommends rejecting both the rhetoric of “the perfect record” and satisfaction with “the imperfect record.”