Computer technology together with political and economic pressures for interlibrary cooperation are having far-reaching effects on online systems for bibliographic control. This work is a compendium of the current thought on how catalogs of the future can best take advantage of machine capabilities in a networking environment. "The Conceptual Foundations of Descriptive Cataloging" comprises the proceedings of a conference of the same name held at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1987. The conference stimulated visionary thinking about the future direction of systems for the bibliographic control of information, particularly the future of those systems applying the Anglo-American codes for descriptive cataloging. It presents the general principles underlying the design of bibliographic databases and includes the shape of bibliographic databases in the forseeable future. It covers topics such as the impact of technology on catalogs and catalog codes, design objectives for online catalogs, standardization and integration in bibliographic control, and access to bibliographic information in the online age.