CONTENTS.

RULES
FOR A
DICTIONARY CATALOGUE.

No code of cataloguing could be adopted in all points by every one, because the libraries for study and the libraries for reading have different objects, and those which combine the two do so in different proportions. Again, the preparation of a catalogue must vary as it is to be manuscript or printed, and, if the latter, as it is to be merely an index to the library, giving in the shortest possible compass clues by which the public can find books, or is to attempt to furnish more information on various points, or finally is to be made with a certain regard to what may be called style. Without pretending to exactness, we may divide dictionary catalogues into short-title, medium-title, and full-title or bibliographic; typical examples of the three being, 1º, the Boston Mercantile (1869) or the Cincinnati Public (1871); 2º, the Boston Public (1861 and 1866), the Boston Athenæum (1874–82); 3º, the author-part of the Congress (1869) and the Surgeon-General’s (1872–74) or least abridged of any, the present card catalogue of the Boston Public Library. To avoid the constant repetition of such phrases as “the full catalogue of a large library” and “a concise finding list,” I shall use the three words Short, Medium, and Full as proper names, with the preliminary caution that the Short family are not all of the same size, that there is more than one Medium, and that Full may be Fuller and Fullest. Short, if single-columned, is generally a title-a-liner; if printed in double columns, it allows the title occasionally to exceed one line, but not, if possible, two; Medium does not limit itself in this way, but it seldom exceeds four lines, and gets many titles into a single line. Full usually fills three or four lines and often takes six or seven for a title.

The number of the following rules is not owing to any complexity of system, but to the number of cases to which a few simple principles have to be applied. They are especially designed for Medium, but may easily be adapted to Short by excision and marginal notes. The almost universal practice of printing the shelf-numbers or the class-numbers renders some of them unnecessary for town and city libraries.

OBJECTS. [4]