DEFINITIONS.

There is such confusion in the use of terms in the various prefaces to catalogues—a confusion that at once springs from and leads to confusion of thought and practice—that it is worth while to propose a systematic nomenclature.

Analysis.

Anonymous,

Strictly a book is not anonymous if the author’s name appears anywhere in it, but it is safest to treat it as anonymous if the author’s name does not appear in the title.

Note that the words are “in the title,” not “on the title-page.” Sometimes in Government publications the author’s name and the title of his work do not appear on the title-page but on a page immediately following. Such works are not anonymous.

Asyndetic,

Author,

Class,

Books are classified by bringing together those which have the same characteristics. [6] Of course any characteristics might be taken, as size, or binding, or publisher. But as nobody wants to know what books there are in the library in folio, or what quartos, or what books bound in russia or calf, or what published by John Smith, or by Brown, Jones, and Robinson, these bases of classification are left to the booksellers and auctioneers and trade sales. Still, in case of certain unusual or noted bindings, as human skin or Grolier’s, or early or famous publishers, as Aldus and Elzevir, a partial class-list is sometimes very properly made. But books are most commonly brought together in catalogues because they have the same authors, or the same subjects, or the same literary form, or are written in the same language, or were given by the same donor, or are designed for the same class of readers. When brought together because they are by the same author, they are not usually thought of as classified; they form the author-catalogue, and need no further mention here except in regard to arrangement. The classes, i. e., in this case the authors, might of course be further classified according to their nations, or their professions (as the subjects are in national or professional biographies), or by any other set of common characteristics, but for library purposes an alphabetical arrangement according to the spelling of their names is universally acknowledged to be the best.

The classification by language is not generally used in full. There are catalogues in which all the English books are separated from all the foreign; in others there are separate lists of French books or German books. The needs of each library must determine whether it is worth while to prepare such lists. It is undeniably useful in almost any library to make lists of the belles lettres in the different languages; which, though nominally a classification by language, is really a classification by literary form, the object being to bring together all the works with a certain national flavor—the French flavor, the German flavor, or it may be a classing by readers, the German books being catalogued together for a German population, the French for the French, and so on. Again, it is useful to give lists not of the belles lettres alone, but of all the works in the rarer languages, as the Bodleian and the British Museum have published separate lists of their Hebrew books. Here too the circumstances of each library must determine where it shall draw the line between those literatures which it will put by themselves and those which it will include and hide in the mass of its general catalogue. Note, however, that some of the difficulties of transliterating {10} names of modern Greek, Russian authors, etc., are removed by putting their original works in a separate catalogue, though translations still remain to puzzle us.

The catalogue by donors or original owners is usually partial (as those of the Dowse, Barton, Prince, and Ticknor libraries). The catalogues by classes of readers are also partial, hardly extending beyond Juvenile literature and Sunday-school books. Of course many subject classes amount to the same thing, the class Medicine being especially useful to medical men, Theology to the theologians, and so on.

Classification by subject and classification by form are the most common. An example will best show the distinction between them. Theology, which is itself a subject, is also a class, that is, it is extensive enough to have its parts, its chapters, so to speak (as Future Life, Holy Spirit, Regeneration, Sin, Trinity), treated separately, each when so treated (whether in books or only in thought) being itself a subject; all these together, inasmuch as they possess this in common, that they have to do with some part of the relations of God to man, form the class of subjects Theology. Class, however, is applied to Poetry in a different sense. It then signifies not a collection of similar subjects, but a collection of books resembling one another in being composed in that form and with that spirit, whatever it is, which is called poetical. In the subject-catalogue class it is used in the first sense—collection of similar subjects; in the form-catalogue it is used in the second—list of similar books.

Most systems of classification are mixed, as the following analysis of one in actual use in a small library will show:

Art, science, and natural history.Subj.
History and biography.Subj.
Poetry.Form (literary).
Encyclopædias and books of reference.Form (practical).
Travels and adventures.Subj. (Has some similarity to a Form-class.)
Railroads.Subj.
Fiction.Form. (Novels, a subdivision of Fiction, is properly a Form-class; but the differentia of the more extensive class Fiction is not its form, but its untruth; imaginary voyages and the like of course imitate the form of the works which they parody.)
Relating to the rebellion.Subj.
Magazines.Form (practical).
General literature, essays, and religious works.A mixture: 1. Hardly a class; that is to say, it probably is a collection of books having only this in common, that they will not fit into any of the other classes; 2. Form; 3. Subj.

Confining ourselves now to classification by subjects, the word can be used in three senses:

1. Bringing books together which treat of the same subject specifically.

That is, books which each treat of the whole of the subject and not of a part only.

2. Bringing books together which treat of similar subjects.

Or, to express the same thing differently:

Bringing subjects together so as to form a class.

A catalogue so made is called a classed catalogue.

3. Bringing classes together so as to form a system.

A catalogue so made should be called a systematic catalogue.

The three steps are then

The dictionary stops in its entries at the first stage, in its cross-references at the second.

The alphabetico-classed catalogue stops at the second stage.

The systematic alone advances to the third.

Classification in the first sense, it is plain, is the same as “entry;” in the second {11} sense it is the same as “class-entry;” and in the third sense it is the same as the “logical arrangement” of the table on p. [12], under “Classed catalogue.”

It is worth while to ascertain the relation of subject and class in the subject-catalogue. Subject is the matter on which the author is seeking to give or the reader to obtain information; Class is, as said above, a grouping of subjects which have characteristics in common. A little reflection will show that the words so used partially overlap, [7] the general subjects being classes [8] and the classes being subjects, [9] but the individual subjects [10] never being classes.

[6] This note has little direct bearing on practice, but by its insertion here some one interested in the theory of cataloguing may be saved the trouble of going over the same ground.

[7]

[8] The subjects Animals, Horses, Plants are classes, a fact which is perhaps more evident to the eye if we use the terms Zoology, Hippology, Botany. The subdivisions of Botany and Zoology are obvious enough; the subdivisions of Hippology may be themselves classes, as Shetland ponies, Arabian coursers, Barbs, or individual horses, as Lady Suffolk, Justin Morgan.

[9] Not merely the concrete classes, Natural history, Geography, Herpetology, History, Ichthyology, Mineralogy, but the abstract ones, Mathematics, Philosophy, are plainly subjects. The fact that some books treat of the subject Philosophy and others of philosophical subjects, and that others treat in a philosophical manner subjects not usually considered philosophical, introduces confusion into the matter, and single examples may be brought up in which it seems as if the classification expressed the form (Crestadoro’s “nature”) or something which a friend calls the “essence” of the book and not its subject, so that we ought to speak of an “essence catalogue” which might require some special treatment; but the distinction can not be maintained. It might be said, for example, that “Geology a proof of revelation” would have for its subject-matter Geology but for its class Theology—which is true, not because class and subject are incompatible but because this book has two subjects, the first Geology, the second one of the evidences of revealed religion, wherefore, as the Evidences are a subdivision of Theology, the book belongs under that as a subject-class.

[10] It is plain enough that Mt. Jefferson, John Milton, the Warrior Iron-clad are not classes. Countries, however, which for most purposes it is convenient to consider as individual, are in certain aspects classes; when by the word “England” we mean “the English” it is the name of a class.

Class entry,

E. g., a book on repentance has class entry under Theology; its specific entry would be under Repentance.

Classed catalogues

A dictionary catalogue contains class-headings, inasmuch as it contains the headings of extensive subjects, but under them there is no class entry, only specific entry. The syndetic dictionary catalogue, however, recognizes their nature by its cross-references, which constitute it in a certain degree an alphabetico-classed (not a systematic) catalogue. Moreover, the dictionary catalogue, without ceasing to be one, might, if it were thought worth while (which it certainly is not), not merely give titles under specific headings but repeat them under certain classes or under all classes in ascending series, e. g., not merely have such headings as Rose, Geranium, Fungi, Liliaceæ, Phænogamia, Cryptogamia, but also under Botany include all the titles which appeared under Rose, Geranium, etc.; provided the headings Botany, Cryptogamia, Fungi, etc., were arranged alphabetically. The matter may be tabulated thus:

The specific entries of A and the classes of B, though brought together in the same catalogues (the class-dictionary and the alphabetico-classed), simply stand side by side and do not unite, each preserving its own nature, because the principle which brings them together—the alphabet—is external, mechanical. But in D the specific entries and the classes become intimately united to form a homogeneous whole, because the principle which brings them together—the relations of the subjects to one another—is internal, chemical, so to speak.

Collector.

Cross-reference.

Dictionary catalogue,

Dictionary and other alphabetical catalogues.

Even the classed catalogues often have specific entry. Whenever a book treats of the whole subject of a class, it is specifically entered under that class. A theological encyclopædia is specifically entered under Theology, and theology is an unsubordinated class in many systems. The alphabetico-classed catalogues have specific entry in many more cases, because they have many more classes. Professor Abbot has such headings as Ink, Jute, Lace, Leather, Life-savers, Locks, Mortars, Perfumery, Safes, Salt, Smoke, Snow, Varnish, Vitriol. Mr. Noyes has scores of similar headings; but neither of them permits individual entry, which the dictionary-catalogue requires. The alphabetico-classed catalogue enters a life of Napoleon and a history of England under Biography and History; the dictionary enters them under Napoleon and England. This is the invariable and chief distinction between the two.

Editor.

Entry,

Author-entry,
Title-entry,
First-word-entry,
Important-word
Series entry,
Subject-word-entry,
Subject-entry,

A cataloguer who should put “The insect,” by Michelet, under Entomology would be making a subject-entry; Duncan’s “Introduction to entomology” entered under the same head would be at once a subject-entry and a subject-word-entry.

Form-entry,

Form,

Heading,

Imprint,

Polygraphic,

Polytopical,

Will the convenience of this word excuse the twist given to the meaning of τόπος in its formation? Polygraphic might serve, as the French use polygraphe for a miscellaneous writer; but it will be well to have both words,—polygraphic denoting (as now) collections of several works by one or many authors, polytopical denoting works on many subjects.

Reference,

Analytical-reference,
Cross-reference,
Heading-reference,
First-word-reference,

Series-entry.

Specific entry,

E. g., registering “The art of painting” under Painting, or a description of the cactus under Cactus. Putting them under Fine arts and Botany would be class-entry. “Specific entry,” by the way, has nothing to do with “species.”

Subject,

It is worth noting that subjects are of two sorts: (1) the individual, as Goethe, Shakespeare, England, the Middle Ages, the ship Alexandra, the dog Tray, the French Revolution, all of which are concrete; and (2) general, as Man, History, Horse, Philosophy, which may be either concrete or abstract. Every general subject is a class more or less extensive. (See note on Class.) Some mistakes have also arisen from not noting that certain words, Poetry, Fiction, Drama, etc., are subject-headings for the books written about Poetry, Fiction, etc., and form-headings for poems, novels, plays, etc.

Subject-entry,

Syndetic,

Title

A title may be either the book’s name (as “&c.”) or its description (as “A collection of occasional sermons”), or it may state its subject (as “Synonyms of the New {15} Testament”), or it may be any two or all three of these combined (as description and subject, “Brief account of a journey through Europe;” name and description, “Happy thoughts;” name and subject, “Men’s wives;” all three, “Index of dates”).

Bibliographers have established a cult of the title-page; its slightest peculiarities are noted; it is followed religiously, with dots for omissions, brackets for insertions, and uprights to mark the end of lines; it is even imitated by the fac-simile type or photographic copying. These things may concern the cataloguer of the Lenox Library or the Prince collection. The ordinary librarian has in general nothing to do with them; but it does not follow that even he is to lose all respect for the title. It is the book’s name and should not be changed but by act of legislature. Our necessities oblige us to abbreviate it, but nothing obliges us to make additions to it or to change it without giving notice to the reader that we have done so. Moreover, it must influence the entry of a book more or less; it determines the title-entry entirely; it affects the author-entry (see § [3]) and the subject-entry (see § [104]). But to let it have more power than this is to pay it a superstitious veneration.

Volume,

This is the bibliographic use of the word, sanctioned by the British Museum rules. That is, it is in this sense only that it applies to all the copies of an edition as it comes from the printer. But there is also a bibliopegic and bibliopolic use, to denote a number of pages bound together, which pages may be several volumes in the other sense, or a part of a volume or parts of several volumes. To avoid confusion I use “volume” in the present treatise as defined in the Rules of the British Museum catalogue, and I recommend this as the sole use in library catalogues, except in such phrases as 2 v. bd. in 1. which means 2 volumes in the bibliographical sense united by binding so as to form one piece of matter.

In the present treatise I am regarding the dictionary catalogue as consisting of an author-catalogue, a subject-catalogue, a more or less complete title-catalogue, and a more or less complete form-catalogue, all interwoven in one alphabetical order. The greater part, however, of the rules here given would apply equally to these catalogues when kept separate.

These rules are written primarily for a printed catalogue; almost all of them would apply equally to a card catalogue.