That our British brethren are neither adapted nor inclined to pose as exemplars in the fine art of cataloguing, we need only cite their own self-criticisms to prove. Here are two confessions found in two authors of books on catalogue-making, both Englishmen. Says one: "We are deficient in good bibliographies. It is a standing disgrace to the country that we have no complete bibliography of English authors, much less of English literature generally." Says another: "The English are a supremely illogical people. The disposition to irregularity has made English bibliography, or work on catalogues, a by-word among those who give attention to these matters."
An American may well add, "They do these things better in France and Germany," while declining to claim the meed of superiority for the United States.
Too much prominence should not be given to place-numbers in library catalogues. The tendency to substitute mere numerical signs for authors and subjects has been carried so far in some libraries, that books are called for and charged by class-numbers only, instead of their distinctive names. An English librarian testifies that assistants trained in such libraries are generally the most ignorant of literature. When mechanical or mnemonical signs are wholly substituted for ideas and for authors, is it any wonder that persons incessantly using them become mechanical? Let catalogue and classification go hand in hand in bringing all related books together, and library assistants will not stunt their intellects by becoming bond-slaves to the nine digits, nor lose the power of thought and reflection by never growing out of their a b c's.
There are two forms of catalogue not here discussed, which are adjuncts to the library catalogue proper. The accession catalogue, kept in a large volume, records the particulars regarding every volume, on its receipt by the library. It gives author, title, date, size, binding, whence acquired, cost, etc., and assigns it an accession number, which it ever after retains. The shelf catalogue (or shelf-list) is a portable one divided into sections representing the cases of shelves in the library. It gives the shelf classification number, author, brief title and number of volumes of each book, as arranged on the shelves; thus constituting an inventory of each case, or stack, throughout the library.
To check a library over is to take an account of stock of all the books it should contain. This is done annually in some libraries, and the deficiencies reported. All libraries lose some books, however few, and these losses will be small or great according to the care exercised and the safe-guards provided. The method is to take one division of the library at a time, and check off all books on the shelves by their numbers on the shelf-list, supplemented by careful examination of all numbers drawn out, or at bindery, or in other parts of the library. Not a volume should be absent unaccounted for. Those found missing after a certain time should be noted on the shelf-list and accession book, and replaced, if important, after the loss is definitely assured.
The reason for writing and printing all catalogue titles in small letters, without capitals (except for proper names) is two-fold. First, there can be no standard prescribing what words should or should not be capitalized, and the cataloguer will be constantly at a loss, or will use capitals in the most unprincipled way. He will write one day, perhaps, "The Dangers of great Cities," and the next, "The dangers of Great cities"—with no controlling reason for either form. Secondly, the symmetry of a title or a sentence, whether written or printed, is best attained by the uniform exclusion of capitals. That this should be applied to all languages, notwithstanding the habit of most German typographers of printing all nouns with capitals, is borne out by no less an authority than the new Grimm's Deutsches Wörterbuch, which prints all words in "lower case" type except proper names. Nothing can be more unsightly than the constant breaking up of the harmony of a line by the capricious use of capitals.
To discriminate carefully the various editions of each work is part of the necessary duty of the cataloguer. Many books have passed through several editions, and as these are by no means always specified on the title-page, one should establish the sequence, if possible, by other means. The first edition is one which includes all copies printed from the plates or the type as first set; the second, one which is reprinted, with or without changes in the text or the title. First editions often acquire a greatly enhanced value, in the case of a noted author, by reason of changes made in the text in later issues of the work. For though the latest revision may and should be the author's best improved expression, his earliest furnishes food for the hunters of literary curiosities. Every catalogue should distinguish first editions thus [1st ed.] in brackets.
In the arrangement of titles in catalogues, either of the various works of the same writer, or of many books on the same subject, some compilers follow the alphabetical order, while others prefer the chronological—or the order of years of publication of the various works. The latter has the advantage of showing the reader the earlier as distinguished from the recent literature, but in a long sequence of authors (in a subject-catalogue) it is more difficult to find a given writer's work, or to detect its absence.
The task of accurately distributing the titles in a catalogue of subjects would be much simplified, if the books were all properly named. But it is an unhappy failing of many writers to give fanciful or far-fetched titles to their books, so that, instead of a descriptive name, they have names that describe nothing. This adds indefinitely to the labor of the cataloguer, who must spend time to analyse to some extent the contents of the book, before he can classify it. This must be done to avoid what may be gross errors in the catalogue. Familiar examples are Ruskin's Notes on Sheep-folds (an ecclesiastical criticism) classified under Agriculture; and Edgeworth's Irish Bulls under Domestic animals.
The work of alphabeting a large number of title-cards is much simplified and abbreviated by observing certain obvious rules in the distribution. (1) Gather in the same pile all the cards in the first letter of the alphabet, A, followed in successive parallel rows by all the B's, and so on, to the letter Z. (2) Next, pursue the same course with all the titles, arranging under the second letter of the alphabet, Aa, Ab, Ac, etc., and so with all the cards under B. C. &c. for all the letters. (3) If there still remain a great many titles to distribute into a closer alphabetic sequence, the third operation will consist in arranging under the third letter of the alphabet, e. g., Abb, Abc, Abd, etc. The same method is pursued throughout the entire alphabet, until all the title-cards are arranged in strict order.
