How to Catalogue a Library

4

I remember very vividly a pleasant day spent in the Pepysian Library with Mr. Bradshaw, under the kindly guardianship of Professor Newton. Mr. Bradshaw was specially delighted with Pepys's own MS. catalogues.

5

"On the Organization and Management of Public Libraries" (United States Special Report, p. 490).

6

Dublin Review, October 1846, p. 20.

7

Catalogue of the Library of the London Institution, Systematically Classified. London: 1835-52. 4 vols., royal 8vo.

8

Catalogue of the Library of Congress in the Capitol of the United States of America: Washington, 1840. 8vo. The third entry in the Index is Abdy, and the reference "xxix. 215. i.;" xxix. applies to the class, which is Geography; the title is to be found in section v., America; so that actually seventy pages of the catalogue have to be glanced through before the work of Abdy can be found.

9

"Bibliotheca Cooperiana. Catalogue of Portions of the Extensive and Valuable Library of Charles Purton Cooper, Esq., Q.C.... These portions will, by Mr. Cooper's direction, be sold by auction by Messrs. S. Leigh Sotheby and John Wilkinson … on Monday, April 19th [1852], and seven following days."

10

"Catalogue of a Further Portion of the Library of Charles Purton Cooper, Esq., Q.C. … This further portion, deposited with Messrs. Sotheby and Wilkinson in the summer of 1852, will, by Mr. Cooper's direction, be sold by them by auction in the spring of the ensuing year. December 1856."

11

Report of the Commissioners on the Constitution and Government of the British Museum, 1850, p. 16.

12

See Questions 4207, 4212, pp. 254-55.

13

See Question 7223, p. 469.

14

Fagan's Life of Sir A. Panizzi, vol. i., pp. 143-44. Mr. Fagan writes "Jérôme," but it is really Jéréme in the catalogue.

15

This is the most extraordinary reason ever given. If it were accepted as valid it would settle the question, for under no circumstances could the authors of all anonymous works be discovered.

16

It must be thoroughly understood that this catalogue of letter A is in itself an excellent piece of work. Its shortcomings are entirely due to incompleteness caused by premature printing.

17

Transactions of the Fourth and Fifth Annual Meetings of the Library Association, 1884, pp. 122-23. In the discussion which followed the reading of this paper, I ventured to speak of the British Museum having been converted to the advantages of printing. Mr. Bullen in his speech said: "There were those in the Museum, Mr. Garnett and himself among them, who, long before the present time, advocated printed, in contradistinction to manuscript, catalogues. As a manuscript catalogue was one of the greatest advantages to a library, so a printed catalogue must of course be of a hundred times greater advantage" (p. 207).

18

I find that the merits of this plan are not so self-evident as I thought, for my friend, Mr. J. B. Bailey, Librarian of the Royal College of Surgeons, who has had experience of a double columned catalogue, prefers a single column with the verso of each page left for additions. I allow that there may be advantages in the latter, but as an octavo page of print is very narrow it is wasteful of space to have only one column. Where it is no disadvantage to have a catalogue in several volumes, this question of space need not be considered.

19

Mr. Cutter gives some useful information respecting card catalogues and the drawers used for keeping the cards, in his article on "Library Catalogues" (United States Report on Public Libraries, pp. 555-60).

20

"A Plan for Stereotyping Catalogues by Separate Titles, and for forming a General Stereotyped Catalogue of Public Libraries in the United States." Proceedings of the Fourth Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, held at New Haven, Conn., August 1850 (8vo, Washington, 1851).

21

Quarterly Review, vol. lxxii., p. 8.

22

"On the Alphabetical Arrangement of the Titles of Anonymous Books" (Transactions and Proceedings of the Conference of Librarians, 1877, pp. 97-9).

23

Referring to my remarks on the use of the word "anonym," I may point out that this is not the correct title of Barbier's work. He used Anonymes as an adjective (ouvrages anonymes), and not as a substantive.

24

This point weakens Lord Mahon's arguments, because the same objection would apply to all the books with authors' names.

25

I had the privilege of talking over these rules with Mr. Bradshaw for many consecutive days, when I inspected the University Library in 1878.

26

For useful notes on short titles and booksellers' catalogues, Mr. Charles F. Blackburn's amusing Hints on Catalogue Titles and on Index Entries (1884) may be consulted.

27

The names of places as they appear in a Latin form are frequently much disguised. A list of some of the most common of these names will be found in the Appendix.

28

It was this practice which confused a correspondent of the Athenæum, who published his discovery that the first folio of Shakespeare was not a folio at all.

29

Always use the word see in preference to vide.

30

This expression is often used, although it can scarcely be considered as English.

31

See his answer to question 9892, Minutes of Evidence, Commission 1849.

32

Was it not Christopher North's Shepherd who said, "Open a school and call it an academy"?

33

Monthly Notices, No. 2.

34

Library Chronicle, vol. iv., pp. 33-9.

35

Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge. Edited for the Syndics of the University Press, vol. i., 1856; vol. ii., 1857; vol. iii., 1858; vol. iv., 1861; vol. v., 1867. Index by H. R. Luard, 1867. 8vo.

36

The number at the end of each rule refers to the page of this book where the reason for the particular rule is more fully discussed.