This might be usefully condensed thus:
Bowman, (Thomas) Hebrew course: grammar, exercises, lexicon, [&c.] Part I. Regular verbs. Edinburgh, 1879.
One objection brought against the dictionary catalogue is that it widely separates subjects that belong together. In the Boston Athenaeum catalogue, for example, the topic Banks is found in Vol. 1, while Money is in Vol. 3; and for Wages, one must go to Vol. 5, while Labor is in Vol. 3. But there are two valid reasons for this. First, the reader who wants to know about banks or wages may care nothing about the larger topics of money or of labor; and secondly, if he does want them, he is sent to them at once by cross-reference, where they belong in the alphabet; whereas, if they were grouped under Political Economy, as in classed catalogues, he must hunt for them through a maze of unrelated books, without any alphabet at all.
It is often forgotten by the advocates of systematic subject catalogues rather than alphabetical ones, that catalogues are for those who do not know, more than for those who do. The order of the alphabet is settled and familiar; but no classification by subjects is either familiar or settled. Catalogues should aim at the greatest convenience of the greatest number of readers.
It is noteworthy that the English Catalogue (the one national bibliography of the current literature of that country) has adopted, since 1891, the dictionary form of recording authors, titles and subjects in one alphabet, distinguishing authors' names by antique type. It is hoped that the American Catalogue, an indispensable work in all libraries, will adopt in its annual and quinquennial issues the time-saving method of a single alphabet.
It is not claimed that the dictionary catalogue possesses fully all the advantages in educating readers that the best classed catalogues embody. But the chief end of catalogues being to find books promptly, rather than to educate readers, the fact that the dictionary catalogue, though far from perfect, comes nearer to the true object than any other system, weighs heavily in its favor. Edward Edwards said—"Many a reader has spent whole days in book-hunting [in catalogues] which ought to have been spent in book-reading." It is to save this wasted time that catalogues should aim.
Nothing can be easier than to make a poor catalogue, while nothing is more difficult than to make a good one. The most expert French bibliographers who have distinguished themselves by compiling catalogues have been most severely criticised by writers who no doubt would have been victimized in their turn if they had undertaken similar work. Byron says
"A man must serve his time to every trade,
Save censure;—critics all are ready made."
When De Bure and Van Praet, most accomplished bibliographers, published the catalogue of the precious library of the duke de La Vallière, the abbé Rive boasted that he had discovered a blunder in every one of the five thousand titles of their catalogue. Barbier and Brunet have both been criticised for swarms of errors in the earlier editions of their famous catalogues. The task of the exact cataloguer is full of difficulty, constantly renewed, and demanding almost encyclopaedic knowledge, and incessant care of minute particulars.
The liability to error is so great in a kind of work which, more than almost any other, demands the most scrupulous accuracy, lest a catalogue should record a book with such mistakes as to completely mislead a reader, that rules are imperatively necessary. And whatever rules are adopted, a rigid adherence to them is no less essential, to avoid misapprehension and confusion. A singular instance of imperfect and misleading catalogue work was unwittingly furnished by Mr. J. Payne Collier, a noted English critic, author, and librarian, who criticised the slow progress of the British Museum catalogue, saying that he could himself do "twenty-five titles an hour without trouble." His twenty-five titles when examined, were found to contain almost every possible error that can be made in cataloguing books. These included using names of translators or editors as headings, when the author's name was on the title-page; omitting christian names of authors; omitting to specify the edition; using English instead of foreign words to give the titles of foreign books; adopting titled instead of family names for authors (which would separate Stanhope's "England under Queen Anne" from the same writer's "History of England," published when he was Lord Mahon); errors in grammar, etc. These ridiculous blunders of a twenty-five-title-an-hour man exemplify the maxim "the more haste, the worse speed," in catalogue-making.
