The International Conference on Cataloguing Principles was held after more than a decade of widespread and intensive study of cataloguing theory and practice. Only in the two periods preceding the formulation of Panizzi's Rules and the Joint Code have cataloguing problems bulked so large in the discussions of librarians and never have so many professional minds given so much time to the study of these problems. It is disappointing that after so much effort the practical results of all these labours are still in the future and that whilst we wait for a new code, thousands of admittedly unsatisfactory entries are made each year in thousands of library catalogues.