The Report of the Commissioners enters very fully into the various points raised by the evidence before them, with the result that it was considered advisable that Mr. Panizzi should be given his own way, and that the new catalogue should be completed in manuscript.
The British Museum Rules are, as already stated, printed in the Catalogue of Printed Books (Letter A, 1841), and in Henry Stevens's Catalogue of the American Books in the Library of the British Museum at Christmas, 1856. They are given in Mr. Thomas Nichols's Handbook for Readers at the British Museum (1869), under the various subjects in alphabetical order, with a series of useful illustrations. Some slight modifications of the rules have been made since the printing of the catalogue has been in hand, and a capital résumé of the rules, under the title of Explanation of the System of the Catalogue, is on sale at the Museum for the small sum of one penny.
The strife which was caused by the publication of the rules was gradually quelled, and the British Museum code was acknowledged in most places as a model.
Professor Charles Coffin Jewett published at Washington in 1853 a very careful work on this subject. His pamphlet is entitled, "Smithsonian Report on the Construction of Catalogues of Libraries, and their Publication by means of Separate Stereotyped Titles, with Rules and Examples. By Charles C. Jewett, Librarian of the Smithsonian Institution."
Mr. Jewett makes an observation with which all who have considered the subject with attention must agree. He writes:—
"Liability to error and to confusion is ... so great and so continual, that it is impossible to labour successfully without a rigid adherence to rules. Although such rules be not formally enunciated, they must exist in the mind of the cataloguer and guide him, or the result of his labours will be mortifying and unprofitable."
With respect to his own rules he writes:—
"The Rules which follow are founded upon those adopted for the compilation of the Catalogue of the British Museum. Some of them are verbatim the same; others conform more to rules advocated by Mr. Panizzi than to those finally sanctioned by the Trustees of the Museum."
The rules are classified as follows:— pp. 1-45, Titles; pp. 45-56, Headings; pp. 57-59, Cross-references; pp. 59-62, Arrangement; pp. 62, 63, Maps, Engravings, Music; p. 64, Exceptional Cases.
The number of rules is not so large as those of the British Museum, and rule 39 stands thus: "Cases not herein provided for, and exceptional cases requiring a departure from any of the preceding rules, are to be decided on by the Superintendent."