Besterman's enormous compilation does not include all the available bibliographies. Vilhelm Grundtvig found some four hundred titles that had escaped Besterman in the first edition and came regretfully to the conclusion that the hope for a wholly satisfactory international bibliography of bibliographies was now unlikely to be realized.[199] His judgment is severe and the second edition has no doubt gone a long way toward removing these defects. A third edition of the World Bibliography (1955) is now in process, with the first volume already off the press. It will contain some 80,000 titles, an increase of one-third over the second edition.
A few difficulties in Besterman's bibliography concern what have been called "linked" books. These are works having their own title pages but issued in conjunction with another book.[200] Unless they have been catalogued as separate works, they are virtually impossible to identify. We have already seen what annoyance a title of this sort can cause in the case of Labbé's bibliography of bibliographies published in 1653.
I cannot reach a decision altogether satisfactory to myself regarding Besterman's inclusion of "abridgments of patent specifications" (I, p. xv). These contain bibliographical information not readily obtainable from any other source, and my disposition is inclined toward generosity. By including them Besterman offers a much more adequate representation of scientific and technological bibliography than would otherwise have been possible. As he correctly says (I, p. xvii), an interest in the fields of humane studies has been predominant in earlier bibliographies of bibliographies. On the other hand, Besterman seems, in including these abridgments, to have stretched to the breaking point his rule for the exclusion of bibliographies contained in non-bibliographical works. If these abridgments are to be included, then one is tempted to call attention to the fact that many German doctoral dissertations offer good bibliographies of small subjects and can be very useful on occasion.[201]
Any definition of a bibliography is difficult to formulate and even more difficult to adhere to. I cite only one more illustration of the problems that arise. Besterman cites (col. 1040) Antti Aarne's catalogue of printed and manuscript versions of Finnish tales. This is clearly within his definition of a bibliography. Perhaps a score of similar catalogues for the tales of countries from Iceland to Rumania are in existence and might equally well have been cited. Although it is not made according to Aarne's pattern, the Typen türkischer Volksmärchen (Wiesbaden, 1953) by Wolfram Eberhard and P. N. Boratav is a similar catalogue of tales. How far shall one go in seeking out such extremely technical reference aids as these? The specialist will know them, and few others can use them with any comfort. Students of folklore have done a great deal of indexing and cataloguing and have produced works that can only be separated from bibliographies with difficulty. What shall one say of John Meier, Kunstlieder im Volksmunde (Halle, 1906)? This is a catalogue of German songs that have been heard in oral tradition but can be traced back to known authors. Meier gives full references to the sources in both the printed works of the authors and the collections of folksongs. To return to tales once more, I mention two books of an apparently wholly bibliographical nature that Besterman does not mention. A. C. Lee, The Decameron. Its Sources and Analogues (London, 1909) is, as its title indicates, a compilation of tales related to those in the Decameron. The Anmerkungen zu den Kinder- und Hausmärchen der Brüder Grimm (5 v.; Leipzig, 1913-1932) by Johannes Bolte and Georg Polívka is a bibliography of parallels to the Household Tales.
Some details in Besterman's work call for comment or correction, but their number is negligible in view of the vast number of titles with which he deals. There are instances in which I should disagree with him in the classification of titles. For example, the Augsburg library catalogue of 1600 (col. 626) is not a bibliography of classical literature but a general catalogue of books and manuscripts in the Augsburg municipal library. Furthermore, its inclusion contradicts the principle stated in the Introduction (I, p. xiv) according to which general catalogues of institutional libraries are omitted. J. B. Mencken's Gelehrten-Lexicon with the second and third editions by C. G. Jöcher is cited (col. 331) as a universal bibliography, but Jöcher's later and much larger revision with its continuations is cited (col. 343) in a different category as a select universal bibliography. Errors in names, place names, and dates appear to be very few. I note that Thomas Cremius (col. 340) should be Thomas Crenius. Such details scarcely call for comment, and their lack of importance is itself a characterization of Besterman's skill. I could wish that the Preface to volume III had explained at greater length the alphabetization of anonymous titles beginning with such words as "Catalogue" or "Index." For example, I cannot find the International Catalogue of Scientific Literature in the Index, although Section N for Zoology is cited in col. 3188. Nor is the International Catalogue in the article "Science" (cols. 2725-2749), where a List of Journals connected with it is cited (col. 2727).
Besterman's bibliography deserves special praise for the fact that it rests on a personal inspection of virtually all the works cited. It needs scarcely to be said that he could have executed this task only at the British Museum or in a few other very great libraries. We can probably infer that Conrad Gesner handled the bibliographies that he cited in 1548, but few later workers have been equally successful in seeing all the books that they name. In this regard Gabriel Peignot made a long step in advance in the Répertoire of 1812. The character of his comments makes it clear that he had a firsthand knowledge of the books that he cites. In 1838 his successor Pie Namur yielded countless times to the temptation to cite books from secondary sources, which moreover he does not name. In 1866 Julius Petzholdt established the standards of bibliographical accuracy that ought to be observed and indicated the books that he had not consulted, but his successors have not in general approached these standards. It is therefore altogether gratifying to praise Besterman's attention to such bibliographical details as collations, the citation of editions, and the identification of pseudonyms. In addition to these merits the correctness of the Index calls for particular mention. The bibliographies named in this essay have not always required an index, but those which do contain one have usually served their readers poorly. Philippe Labbé was the first but by no means the last of our bibliographers to offer his reader an unsatisfactory index. Even Julius Petzholdt left much to be desired in this regard. The index to Henri Stein's Manuel is conspicuous for its faults. In comparison with his predecessors Besterman's success in the making of an index is all the more meritorious.
In a second edition published between 1947 and 1949, Besterman revised his bibliography to include books printed as late as 1944 and 1945. Since I have referred to this and not to the first edition in my comments, it is sufficient to quote Besterman's statement of the differences between the two editions. The improvements and changes are important to every user of the book but do not affect its nature in any fundamental way.
Large parts of the field have been surveyed anew, the text has been minutely revised throughout, and improvements made. The number of cross-references has been multiplied. Most important, however, are the new entries, which make this edition over 55 per centum bigger than the first. The number of volumes recorded and separately collated is now about 65,000. Nearly all intermediate editions [between the first and last] have now been deleted; they have only been retained, in fact, for bibliographies first published before 1800, and for those of special interest or importance.[202]
And now, five years after the completion of the second edition, Besterman has begun to print a third edition, which he declares to be a "final" edition. As he writes in a letter of July 27, 1954, the new edition will show "the normal increase in size due to the passage of time." A systematic check of Library of Congress holdings has enabled him to strengthen considerably the coverage of American bibliographical publication, north and south. He has also made renewed efforts to improve the representation of scientific and Slavic books. The first volume, which is now in proof, will appear early in 1955 and three more volumes will follow. One lays A World Bibliography of Bibliographies aside with astonishment that one man had the courage to conceive the task and the strength to complete it. In its conception of universality and its success in approaching completeness Besterman's book is a climax in this history of bibliographies of bibliographies.
An emphasis on the current usefulness of the works cited is characteristic of the last four bibliographies of bibliographies that I shall name. These compilations by Bohatta, Funke, and Hodes; by Collison; by Malclès; and by Totok and Weitzel are intentionally selective in nature and will therefore require only brief comment. Incidentally, they do not owe their origin to Besterman's suggestion: "it will no doubt eventually become necessary to publish a general bibliography of best bibliographies" (I, p. xvii), although they serve this purpose more or less adequately. The practical emphasis in these four bibliographies betrays the training of their authors in librarianship.