Consider the catalogue

Books can be "pigeonholed" in various ways - by genre or subject in the bookshop, by Dewey Decimal number in the public library, by size or colour of spine on the home bookshelves. They can also be uniquely identified: library catalogues include author, title, publisher, isbn, etc etc, the combination of which differentiates the book from others with similar information in various categories, and for online publications their uniqueness is identified by their singular DOI (digital object identifier).

At http://www.artistsbooksonline.org/, documentation of each of the works in the collection includes further categories, adding information that enhances the reader's understanding of an artist's book, and giving the author/agent ways of defining this project as unique among their work, or as a facet of their work, or as an object among a series -

Aesthetic Profile

movement:

subject:

themes:

content form:

publication tradition:

inspiration:

related works:

other influences:

community:

reception history:

And finally, a picture - one of the many further uses for salvaged catalogue cards (remember those?), as seen here. The moth is by Kristin Alana Baum. In 2004, when the University of Iowa retired its card catalogue, a million cards were salvaged by cARTalog and sent to artists.