CATALOGUING APPARATUS.
In this section will be noticed only catalogue-holders, or accession-frames, together with any mechanical apparatus used in the production of catalogues. Cabinets for holding card-catalogues are made in a variety of styles, some being drawers fitted into the fronts of counters, and others being independent stands of drawers. The usual style of cabinet at present used provides for the cards being strung through oval or rounded holes on to brass rods, which are fixed, to prevent readers from removing them and so upsetting the order of the cards. The drawers themselves are made to pull out only as far as necessary, in order to prevent careless users from pulling them out altogether and working destruction to both fittings and arrangement. The construction of these cabinets should only be entrusted to skilled workmen, and only oak, walnut, or other hard woods should be used. As every librarian has his or her own opinion as to how such cabinets should be made and their contents safeguarded, it will be best to refer inquirers to examples of such catalogues in actual work, in different styles, at Liverpool, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Nottingham; the Royal College of Surgeons, Guildhall, Battersea, St. Martin-in-the-Fields, and Clerkenwell, London, and elsewhere. A special cabinet is made by Messrs. Stone of Banbury, Oxon., but its safeguards require to be improved. A half-falling front locked on to the rod which secures the cards is a very simple and effective plan of keeping order in isolated cabinets. In cases where the backs of the drawers are get-at-able from the staff side of the counter, even more simple methods of securing the cards, while giving every facility in the way of making additions, can be adopted. Projecting guides to show in index style the whereabouts of particular parts of the alphabet should be made either of tin or linen-mounted cards. Tin lasts best, although the lettering sometimes rubs off. Nothing will satisfy a librarian, who has a card-catalogue in contemplation, so much as the comparison of the kinds adopted in different libraries. The chief objection to card cabinets or drawers is the insurmountable one of limitation to public use being fixed by the number of drawers or cabinets. With drawers in a counter front one consulter monopolises one drawer, while with tiers of three or four drawers in cabinet form never more than two persons can use it with any comfort. The exposure of only one title at a time is another serious drawback, while the peculiar daintiness of touch requisite for the proper manipulation of the cards makes the use of the catalogue a labour and a perplexity to working people with hardened finger-tips. We think it likely, therefore, that catalogues in a large series of handy guard-books, or in volumes or boxes provided with an arrangement for inserting slips of additions, will in the future come to be recognised as that best adapted for general use. A card-catalogue for staff use ought in any case to be kept, either in boxes or covered trays. Another catalogue appliance is the accession-frame, or device for making public all recent additions to the library. Of these there are several, but we need only mention a few as typical of the rest. At some libraries a glazed case with shelves is placed on the counter, and in this new books are displayed with their titles towards the public. It seems to work very well, and has been used with success at Birmingham, Lambeth, and elsewhere, to make known different classes of literature which are not so popular as they should be. Liverpool has, or had, a series of frames in which were movable blocks carrying the titles of additions, and at Rotherham a somewhat similar plan has been adopted. Cardiff shows additions in a frame holding title cards which can be removed by readers and handed over the counter as demand notes. Guard-books like those in use at the British Museum are common, both for additions and general catalogues; while cards or leaves in volumes laced on cords or rods have been used at Manchester, in Italy, and generally in Europe and America. A neat box with falling sides for holding catalogue cards is used in the University Library of Giessen in Germany, and seems well adapted for staff use, or for private and proprietary libraries. Latest of all is the ingenious cylindrical catalogue-holder or stand invented by Mr. Mason, of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London. It consists of a broad revolving cylinder, upon the outer rim of which are placed a number of wooden bars, each wide enough to take a written or printed author and title entry. These bars are movable, being designed to slide round the whole circumference of the cylinder, so that additions can be inserted at any part of the alphabet. Each bar represents a book-title, and the plan of using is that the titles of additions should be mounted on the bars, leaving spaces for additions, and so afford a convenient and easily worked accession list in strict alphabetical order. The cylinder is intended to be fixed in a counter front or special stand, and to be all covered in with the exception of a portion about equal to the size of a demy octavo page, which will show under glass. The reader turns the cylinder round to the part of the alphabet he wants by simply turning a handle, and so the whole is shown to him without any waste of public space.